...don't blink...

As the title of this post suggests, a considerable amount of time has passed since I've last updated you all. My apologies. Life happened.

It is fairly safe to say that most of you expect me to talk about how crazy-busy my last semester was. Well, you're in luck. No surprises here today. So what is so special about the past six months or so? Everything.

Returning from Omaha was strange and humbling. Having only one year left of classes, a new roommate, and my brother still living in Colorado, I felt more than ever that it was the beginning of the end of my time here.  Perpetuating these feelings, I began the search for a 4th year placement and ended up spending nearly half of my time during the past six months traveling.

For those of you who do not know, the AuD program consists of three years of academic coursework and short-term clinical internship followed by a full-year clinical externship during the 4th year of the program. This "4th year" can be spent anywhere offering externship training.

Because I have chosen to specialize in pediatric audiology, I began to look into children's hospitals across the country who have strong audiology programs. Traveling to and interviewing with hospitals in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, North Carolina, and Washington DC, I have decided to accept the position at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. I am thoroughly excited about this opportunity, as Cincinnati Children's is the #1 Pediatric Audiology facility in the nation. Come the end of May, I will be packing up and moving to Cincinnati, OH for at least one year. Don't you worry, my mom gave me a winter coat for Christmas :)

As if that wasn't exciting enough to go through during the busiest semester yet, I have been extremely busy with my position on the Board of Directors for the Student Academy of Audiology (SAA). I've had the chance to work closely with the founder of the Special Olympics Healthy Hearing initiative brainstorming ways in which we can boost audiology students' involvement in volunteering for Special Olympics events.
Taking the chance to co-author an article appearing in a publication of the American Academy of Audiology and creating events at the Academy's annual convention in Chicago, IL this April, I have been working hard to increase awareness of the relationship between SAA and Special Olympics and encourage involvement of both students and professionals.  This experience has certainly been beneficial to me as a future professional, but more importantly, it has been inspiring on a more personal level, as I have been able to combine two of my greatest passions, service and people with special needs, with my profession.

Other noteworthy happenings since last July include an audiologic mission trip to Guaymas, Mexico with the Rotary Club. In two days, we served over 385 patients, fitting 150 hearing aids on children and adults with hearing loss. I also attended one of the most fantastic pediatric audiology conferences of all time in Chicago where I had the chance to present some of my research from this summer and rub shoulders with some truly incredible ear-loving people.

Of course, all work and no play sounds rather boring...so I had to make sure to throw in a little fun as well! In September, I visited Sara in Seattle and celebrated my mom's 50th birthday with the girls in Laughlin in October. As soon as the semester was over and my decisions about next year had been made, I spent some time in Missouri and Arkansas relaxing before the craziness of Christmas began.

I know what you're thinking. And yes, it was just as exhausting as it sounds. As the winter break is long gone and this next semester is getting ready to explode into full-force...I find comfort in knowing that this is it. This is the last semester. Three more months and I will be finishing up finals and packing up my life for the next adventure.
But stay tuned, the next three months are sure to bring some excitement, I'm sure.

Until next time....

I am very happy to report that I have been able to keep my usual summertime tradition of going on a few trips. Granted my entire summer could potentially be classified as a trip, it is still nice to have a vacation from the everyday no matter where you are located.

Being in Omaha for nearly 8 weeks before I traveled outside the city, I was getting a small bout of cabin fever.  Thankfully, I was able to make it back to AZ in early July so I could attend the family trip to Rocky Point, Mexico.  Next month is my Grandpa Jim's 75th birthday, and as a surprise, we were able to get nearly the whole family down for a stay on the beach. 

Less than 40 hours after I arrived back in Omaha from Mexico, I left for Virginia. I spent that next weekend in Reston for an extremely busy weekend of meetings at the American Academy of Audiology Headquarters.  As a member of the 2010-2011 Student Academy of Audiology (SAA) Board of Directors, this meeting was basically the kick-off to our year of office.  The other Board members are so motivating and it was very exciting to collaborate with each other to set a game-plan for the progress we'll be making in the next year.  SAA is a very new organization, and our board has a lot of work ahead of us - but judging by the productivity of the weekend, it's safe to say we're all perfectly fit for the job!



As my time here in middle-America is rapidly coming to a close, these last few weekends are being stuffed with activities that we have been pushing aside.  This past weekend, two of my roommates and I drove to Kansas City, MO.  The 3-hour drive wasn't too bad, but we hit a HUGE storm and were slowed to about 30mph and 50ft visibility for 45 minutes. 
That evening we went to the OAR concert and, as we were attempting to duck out early to beat the crowd, we happened upon some backstage passes for the after-party with the band! The thrill of actually getting the passes exceeded the event by quite a bit, but it was really awesome to meet the band and take pics with them! Lindsay Tippett drove up from Lawrence to meet us at Oceans of Fun on Saturday.  This water park was so cool, and it turned out to be a really great day to be in the water because it was so hot out! Later that night, a friend of mine who I haven't seen in about 7 years was able to come meet up with us. It was so great to catch up!  The rest of the trip was basically filled with dead car batteries and waiting on AAA - discovering first hand the slow-pace of middle America! 

I have a few more weeks here in Omaha before I make my way back to the Southwest and I'm hoping that I will be able to break away from wrapping up my project long enough to check a few more things off my Omaha To-Do List!

The city of Omaha has proven to be exciting in ways for which I wasn't quite prepared.  No one told me how much it stormed here. No one!! We have severe (and I'm talking severe weather & flash flood warning) thunderstorms about every other day.  For those of you who know me, you understand how unsettling this might be for me.  For those of you who surprisingly don't know this about me yet - I am terrified of thunder and lightning.  Yes, I know.  I realize that I am no longer 7 years old and that nothing bad is going to happen, but it still scares the be-jesus out of me. With that, I'd like to share with you my favorite thunderstorm story so far.

Last Monday evening, my roommates and I went to dinner at Michael Gorga & Pat Stelmachowicz's home. I realize that this in itself deserves an entirely different story, but that will be for another day.  Having stayed for post-dinner conversation, we didn't get home until after 10pm - missing any calls from hospital security hoping to pass on the warnings of severe weather to come. You see, at the California House (that's what our duplex is called) we don't have cable TV.  In fact, thanks to the digital turn-over, an old set of bunny ears with an inordinate amount of tin foil no longer even give us the 2.5 channels of television that previous residents had the luxury of experiencing. Any time there is an event worth broadcasting (say, a tornado watch), hospital security calls us to pass along the message.

So after dinner, we all go to bed - re-living the surreal evening at the Gorga's, only to be woken up around 4am to thunder shaking our windows.  One loud crash after another and about 30 minutes into the earth-shattering storm, the sky lights up at the same time as a huge clap of thunder and an alarm goes off in the living room of our house.  Naturally all four of us begin to panic and rush down to the entrance to the basement.
[Side note: our basement has a room that we can only imagine is for "bad children".  Picture a wooden room, with two wooden benches pushed together to serve as a bed - and a blanket haphazardly thrown across it as if someone had just woken up and rushed out the door.  Needless to say, we do not go into the basement unless we need to - not even when the world is ending outside our windows.] So we're huddled in our mud room - awaiting the rescue of hospital security.  When they finally arrive, we're pleased to learn that the Boys Town fire department did in fact respond to our call.  However, they did so simply by calling hospital security to ask if security would go check it out to see if the fire department's assistance was really needed.  Only in Omaha. :)