I cannot believe that I will be graduating from the University of Tennessee on May 12th! Time has flown by, and at the same time I feel like I have been at UT FOREVER! I have been thinking a lot this week about the things I am going to miss and the people I have met and the person I have become since being here. 4 years of college will grow and shape you into an adult even when you don't notice it happening.
UT has been my "American" home. I moved from South Africa in December of 2007, where I had lived since I was two years old, and came straight to Knoxville to start my first semester at UT. My first impression when I was moving into the dorms was "Wow, the girls here have ALOT of clothes!" ha! My parents were still in South Africa and my grandpa moved me in. And then, he drove away and I don't think I have ever been so scared in my entire life! Beth-Ann, my older sister, lived a few floors down from me in the same girls dorm, and I called her that night and ended up sleepig in her room because I was just too overwhelmed and scared!
I moved from the warm sunny beach in South Africa to the coldest weather I had ever experienced in America! I remember being freezing! South Africa never gets CLOSE to being as cold as it can get here in Tennessee. I was so excited to see snow but could not sit outside in the snow and enjoy it because I had never owned a "heavy" coat in my life! :) I remember being so miserable walking a mile to my classes in the freezing snow just crying and thinking "I am going to seriously die just walking to class, I will never be warm again!"
I remember trying so hard to be "American." I started dating Dave and asked him every day "Do my clothes look American?" "Is THAT what Americans like to eat??" "SO THIS is what Americans to do for fun!?" I would dress up in all orange and cheer on the basketball team not knowing what in the world was going on in the game. I would take forever buying a drink from the machine because I never remembered what quarters, dimes and pennies looked like. My favorite thing was going to the library and heading straight for Starbucks. I had always heard about Starbucks, and it was the best treat in the world to me! I remember one of my closest friends from South Africa came to D.C. and my mom and I got to spend the weekend with her there. I took her to Starbucks and she said "Wow, Coffee in a to-go cup!" No wonder I was so excited to go to the library! ha!
When Dave and I first started to "talk," we were hanging out at the BCM. He asked me if I wanted to grab something to eat down on the strip. (restaraunts near campus.) Well, all the restaraunts on the strip were new and exciting to me so I was like "YES, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING ME!!!!!!!" So, I asked him if he could give me a couple of hours, because in South Africa people do not eat out every day. It is usually for something special and not just to grab dinner on the go. So, I thought this was really special and got super dressed up. When we met up to head down to the strip, he was like "Why are you dressed up, we are just going to Wendys..." And I was like "I KNOW!!!!! Thank you for asking me!"
My friend Sarah Roberson and I would study for nursing together most nights and she introduced me to late night study candy. (brain food) It was then that I got addicted to Raisinets, Three Musketeers and MnMs.
When I was growing up, my dad would have to make trips to America occasionally for conferences and would always bring me back a Diet Dr Pepper! I would save that one diet dr pepper for the most special occasion! I would wait and wait and then finally sip on it all day just enjoying my taste of America. When I came to UT, I realized I could get a diet dr pepper each time I turned a corner at any little grocery store or drink machine. Let me just say that A LOT of diet dr pepper has been consumed in my college career!
My first football game was the most overwhelming experience! I didn't know that I HAD to wear orange and freaked out the night before because orange is not a color I just have stting in my closet. Everyone told me to meet at like 10am to tailgate when the game was at 6pm. I was thinking "WHY are we meeting so early, does it take that long to get to the front of the line???" I remember being crammed in the student section with my friends not knowing when to stand or sit or what I was cheering for! I got extremely sunburnt and was exhausted by the time it was over from cheering and trying to see over people and trying to figure out the actually rules of the game. It was a long game. And I couldn't believe that the next week we would do the whole process all over again! haha! I told Dave that I didn't understand why Americans liked sports so much, but obviously this was going to be my weekend entertainment throughout college!
I also loved having wireless internet at UT. In South Africa we always had to wait like ten minutes just to get logged on and then my dad would give me like ten minutes to be online on facebook. Seriously?? I was missing out! I entered into a whole new world when I realized I could get online anytime, anywhere, all the time, neverending, forever!!!! haha! Thats when I became an amazing facebook stalker and wrote novel long emails to my South African friends.
My parents met at the BCM and my sisters both were very involved and so I started to check it out as well! My sister Beth-Ann had already been going to the BCM and told me she knew who I was going to marry from there and his name was "David Williams." She had been in a class with him the previous semester and apparently she knows us both well! :) I started coming around the BCM wanting to find American friends so badly! I am the type of person who needs girls to TALK to! and walk with and have coffee with and share my life with!! I came to the right place apparently!
I started playing on the worship team at the BCM like two weeks into my first semester and have never stopped. The crazy bass player, David Williams, has never stopped playing either. :) The BCM has been the place where I have found my bestest friends and of course my future husband! I have had the greatest time just getting to know the people and having a home away from home.
I had already decided in high school that I wanted to be a nurse and started doing everything I knew possible in order to get accepted into the UT Nursing Program. I went and spoke to the advisors, took 12 hours of summer classes, stayed up late studying, woke up at 4am to study multiple times during my micro class, got to know girls in the nursing program that I knew from the BCM, prayed, prayed harder, stressed more, worked like crazy, became best friends with the library and finally on March 23rd, 2008 I got my acceptance letter to the UT College of Nursing! I was estatic!!!!!!!! March 23rd, 2008 was also Dave and I's one year anniversary of dating so it was a big celebration day for me!
On the orientation day the professors told us that we were sitting in a room of 100 strangers and soon these people would become our best friends. And that has been so true for me! Through 8 hour clinical days, Monday class days that last for 9-10 hours, labs, study dates, lunches and coffees I have been blessed to have the most amazing girls on my journey with me through nursing school! We have stressed and been exhausted together and cleaned up poop together in hospitals, but cleaning up poop sure has bonded us in a special way! I am so thankful for nursing school and the way I have been exposed to so many different hospital experiences, gotten to know such amazing nurses, learnt so much from my fantastic professors and grown so much as an individual! I love nursing, sooooo much! I loved all my clinicals and loved the people I got to meet in the hospitals. This nursing career is going to be an excitig journey!
I am going to enjoy tomorrow, my LAST day to study for a nursing test in college! I am going to live it up with some starbucks, raisinets and diet dr pepper! But once I take that final, I must say, I will be THRILLED to be done! I am ready to just BE a nurse, BE a wife, BE in the real world and NOT have to study or go to classes!
But UT has been a great adventure and I will always look back on my time here with great memories!
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