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“Thanks, how was the meet?”
His chuckle boomed through my phone, “Top qualifier for the 400-IM and 200 Free. What can I say, I’m working my way towards the Olympics!”
Oh dear god. He was on one of his highs again. The kind of high you get after placing first in neck-to-neck swimming competitions. When he was in this mood, there was nothing I could do but let him go on and on. After about 2 minutes, he finally said, “You zoned out, huh?”
“Yup,” I said, with a giggle.
“You know how it goes, Ace, you get all the good and the bad with me.”
“Yup, after 12 years, 2 months, and 4 days of friendship, trust me, I know.”
“Well, Ace. You’re the genius and I’m the brawn.”
I laughed, “Whatever.”
“Gotta go, Ace. Coach is a-calling. Don’t forget to pick me up at 7 PM on Wednesday,” he said.
I said with a smirk, “When have I ever forgotten?”
“Never. Best reason you’re my best friend,” he chuckled.
“Whatever. Stay safe. See you,” I said before I hung up.
I was still laughing at Kieran’s in-born arrogance, borderline annoying words, about his ‘greatness’ when I heard a knock on my door, followed by a smiling, hazel-eyed face, “We’re on tonight, right?” It was Nalee, one of my roommates and best friends.
I nodded my head and smiled.
“Yes, Nales. Of course we are.”
She sat her 5’2” petite frame on my bed and in a wistful voice, “I wish you didn’t have to go for your summer internship so we could go travel after graduation!”
I said quietly, “Nales, I’d love to go travel with you and Tanya, but I got to do my internship and take my boards.”
She nodded her head vigorously, tumbles of curly, brown hair fell from her ponytail, “I know, girlfriend. I know you have your life planned out and I’m just thinking that once we graduate, we’re all going to be pulled into different directions so it would be really cool if we got to go around the world and travel as a last hurrah after college!”
Her statement brought to mind the inevitable reality - we were graduating college and as much as we didn’t want to, we would be leading different lives. Nalee would be an environmental scientist. She had a job waiting for her at a Florida-based company. Tanya, a civil engineering major, planned to stay in the West Coast.
As for me, well, every single thing that I did had a purpose, since the day I learned I could be whatever I wanted to be. Ok, well since I was 15. I lived with 3 P’s and 5 D’s. The P’s were my goals; D’s were my rules.
1.Publish the first ‘Nursing in Sports Science’ book by age 30. My mom published her first Astrophysics book at 28.
2.Practice nursing prudently. I wanted to be a nurse since I was 5. I minored in Chemistry because I loved it since middle school.
3.Prove that you can achieve all the top honors in school and career.
4.Don’t cheat. Except when racing against Kieran in the pool.
5.Do go to sleep before midnight. REM sleep is restorative. Exception: Girls’ night out – added when I turned 21.
6.Do it and enjoy it. With the right boy, but not before 16.
7.Don’t fall in love. Falling in love can mess up the 3 P’s.Look at Nalee – Sorry, Nales.
8.Don’t wear a one-piece. It doesn’t suit your body.
My brain was my ‘biggest asset’ as my dad often said. Learning and excelling came easy for me. However, it still took hard work and focus to maintain my GPA with grueling class schedules. I may have been given the gift of a cranium that could hold massive amounts of information; but, I still had to do the actual work – all the assignments, group works, and clinical rotations.
I looked over at Nalee and thought about how lucky I was to have a friend like her. She never made fun of how I was such a stickler in achieving all my plans and goals. She accepted them as extensions of who I was.
