Welcome back. The break is over and the semester has started off with a bang. With classes beginning and friends reminiscing, work of any kind is far from our minds. Each of us thinking syllabus week was going to be a breeze, ending up getting hit by a tornado. Every professor skipping through the get-to-know you games and getting down to brass tax. Now I have to read 12 books by yesterday and I haven’t even read the class requirements yet! My agenda has never been so full nor my mind so exhausted. It’s as if every professor collectively changed the meaning of syllabus week. Over the past few days I have done nothing but drown in paper, whether that be from books or paperwork. But we have made it out alive… hopefully.

Other than a crazed couple of weeks of due dates and assignment sorting I’ve come to the conclusion that as of right now I couldn’t be more content with my life. The struggles from my first semester have died down and the second semester has thus far proven to be the best. I’m at the school of my dreams with some of the best people I’ve ever met, learning how to make the world a better place. Each day I wake up confident about my future, excited to be making strides towards my goals. Reaching those goals with a circle of people I’m lucky enough to call my friends. They keep me grounded when I begin to fly too high all while keeping me in belief that flying is possible in the first place. All of this thanks to my home away from home. It couldn’t get any better.

Sure the work gets intense and I constantly miss my friends and family back home, but they’re only a phone call away, and the work is why I’m here. A challenge is only as difficult as you make it. Whenever the day begins to drag, work becomes overbearing or the stress of life creeps in there is always someone to lighten the mood, help carry the load or share the experience with. Each experience with friends, both new or old, have only proven to me that I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to impact my life.

It’s the little things that seem hard, those make the biggest impact, that is the reason I am ‘content’. The people I have praised are masters of the little things. Things like respect, kindness, honesty, and trust. They harvest the ‘things’ I care most about, they are why I am ‘content’. Thank you for being you, thank you for the little things and thank you for experiences to last a lifetime. I hope they continue for a lifetime; but if they are fleeting then I’m glad we captured the moment.