One More Semester.

This is almost it.

We're in class for one of the last times - finishing up fall semester, the last fall semester of school that I'll ever have. About to present our case reports on Friday. Applying for graduation. Applying to take the boards. Taking pictures tomorrow.
I'm surrounded by my fellow classmates, and it's weird. We've all come so far. 3 years ago, I was freaking out about whether I'd be accepted for an interview. Now, we're all preparing to go to our last clinics in January and exchanging stories about treatment and clinic sites and life in between. The 1st year physical therapy students buzz around us, the second years are practicing for their big musculoskeletal competency, and we are practicing skills that a year ago may have made me scratch my head. Talking updated CPT codes, funny ICD-10 codes, how annoying (or helpful) FOTO can be, and gait training with crutches versus gait training amputees. "Have you learned A-P mobs yet? What about strain counter strain?"
It's all delightfully familiar, and fun, and relaxed. My days have some classes and paperwork to do, but for the most part, the stress of exams, of competencies - is over. We have a clinic full of high expectations ahead of us, but we are ready for the challenge. We are making that transition from student to clinician and preparing ourselves to go out in the real world and be independent, practicing doctors of physical therapy. Next semester we will hear our names called at graduation and then we will go out into the world and live our separate lives as professionals.
My life is so much different now than it has been in the past years. I find I have more time for life skills - for every day things, such as going to see movies or play trivia in the evenings. I can paint during semesters, instead of leaving my canvas untouched for the months of classwork. All of those scary classes and long lists of requirements that I used to stare at, wondering how in the hell they were ever going to get done - they are done. I've finished them. I've run the race. I've jumped over the hurdles. PT school has sucked, it's been hard, but it's changed me. It's made me a professional. It's taken my quiet self and, yes, I'm still quiet, but it's taught me how to talk to patients and act confident and teach and to heal. Soon, I'll have a real paycheck. Soon, I'll have decent health insurance. Soon, I'll have student loan payments. Soon, I'll be managing my own caseload of patients.
It's not "eventually" anymore, or years from now. The future I've been building for years now is soon.
And it's been a long wait. It couldn't come soon enough.