'Twas the night before dental school

Classes begin TOMORROW!

After an epic two days of orientation, a night on the town with the crew, and a slow weekend, tomorrow is officially the first day of, what? 17th grade?? Heck yeah! I am feeling so very excited but also very thankful at this time. Let me tell you about the last few days first.

Day 1 of orientation was pretty typical. We arrived in our business professional attire, found our name tag and seats, took headshots (praying these came out okay because I really can never tell and they didn't show us the final product), ate breakfast, and then spent the morning listening to different presentations. Mostly the topics were congratulatory, welcome to our school, and what resources there are along with what the expectations and rules consist of. We had lunch with current students and did a tour of the school.

Day 2 was very fun! We started the morning with a few more presentations, learned about mental health resources (amazing btw), and met more professors. There was a panel of current students to answer questions, and I volunteered to help write our class Code of Ethics. I am super excited to be apart of it- I took a medical ethics course way back at Central Lakes College, so ethics has always intrigued me, but I feel honored to be representing our class in this small way. We then had a ton of team-building activities in the rec center. SO MUCH FUN ! Some of my favorites were the ones where we hyped up our classmates. For one, there were three people, a reporter, a superstar, and a hype man. The reporter would ask "superstar, what do you like about yourself??" and the superstar might say "oh, I like my blue eyes" (this is what I said) and the hype man would rant and RAVE about the blue eyes of the superstar. It was so fun and high energy and I really thrived in that environment. We went to Sally's afterwards- a local spot near campus. The cheese curds were phenomenal. I was so exhausted after this day, but it left me feeling like I had connected with a lot of people and feeling very confident about these next four years.

Friday we didn't have any orientation business, but Delta Sigma Delta did throw a welcome party for the D1s and we got to meet some of the members of the dental frat. We took on the lightrail and headed to Cowboy Jack's after and it was a super fun night. :)

Saturday was nothing crazy. I mostly spent the day being lazy, enjoying some free time with Honey, picking up some Facebook marketplace steals, and grocery shopping. I capped the night by washing my UMD backpack- 4 years, 3 countries, countless roadtrips later and she needed to be cleaned. I also facetimed my old roomies. <3 This morning (Sunday), I accidentally overslept my alarm, so instead of going to church I just read some of my Bible. I've been trying to prioritize Bible study and my dad gave me an affirmation type daily book of Jesus so it's been a goal of mine to stay caught up with the days. I made a nice breakfast and went to Sunday Morning Club Minneapolis which is basically the definition of hot girl walk with friends. My former physics partner reached out and I hadn't seen her in a hot minute so we got coffee and caught up on life together. Then Tessa came to town for lunch and to drop off Ivy, my cat for the week. Ivy is potentially going to stay with Tessa- we've been trying to decide.. But she'll be here for the first week of class anyways.

With dental school starting tomorrow, I just feel so grateful to be in this position and to have gotten in on my first try. This time last year I had just received my interview invite for the U of MN and now I'm here as a first year dental student. God is so good. This life is so sweet. I cannot wait to see where I'll be this time next year. :)

Enough of the blab! I have a lot to prepare for tomorrow and want to work on some digital planning before I'm in the thick of it. YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS.

xx

-Beka