My Internship and Other Surprising Things That Really Weren't Surprising

In her book "Cold Tangerines", Shauna Niequist says this: "I just turned thirty and I'm finally willing to admit something about life, or at least about my life and it's this: I should have written in pencil. I should have viewed the trajectory of my life as a mystery or an unknown. I should have planned lightly, hypothetically and should have used words like "maybe" and "possibly." Instead, every chance I got, I wrote in stone and Sharpie. I stood on my future, on what I knew, on the certainty of what life would hold for me, as thought it was rock. ..... Now when I think about the future, ..... I try to write in pencil."

I'm older than 30, actually quite a bit older, but even though I should know better, things still change when I least expect it. I was reading this book while I was in Ohio with Cody and Elizabeth and I had my month of June written in stone and Sharpie. After working out detail after detail, I had everything in place and ready to do my medical assistant internship at Aultman working alongside Elizabeth. The only detail I had not covered was to ensure that all the T's had been crossed and the I's dotted between Kaplan and Aultman. They weren't and I was in a somewhat of a bind. I had seven weeks to get in a little less than 160 internship hours and the one thing I did not have -- time -- is what it was going to take to get everything coordinated and ready for me to get to work. I was able to do some observation hours and to this day, I wish my plans had worked out. This was the kind of clinic I want to work in, this is the patient population I like the best. But observation was not going to help me with the skills I needed and I realized I would have to come back to Iowa and finish up here. I was able to get in touch with a couple clinic managers I knew and found two clinics where I could obtain the hours and skills I would need.

As I was looking at finishing school and what my finanicial obligation would soon be, it was in my head that I would get a part-time job in an office as a medical assistant in addition to my transcription job. One problem. I don't like working in offices. My internship was an extremely short-term situation and I could barely think about going in and staying for the.whole.day. I know that I don't like to work in an office, that's why I love my transcription job working from home. So I'm finding God bringing me back to why I went back to school in the first place. It's to do free clinic work and mission trips. While Aultman wasn't a free clinic, it did have a large population of uninsured, and I think that's why I liked it there. So while that doesn't help much with the financial obligation, I can see God opening some doors to give me the desires of my heart, but for now I'm going to write it in pencil.