lifestyle transformation challenge.

I merely sat up in bed to get this. I was angry, but at least I got
an inspiration pic for my blog :) Gotta love the silver lining!!

Metal raking against metal.  Pounding so loud the walls shake. A horrendous sour smell forcing its way up my nose, making my toes curl. A constant hufffff puffff BANG ringing in my ears...for forty-five minutes straight. What I thought was a horribly loud, stinky dream actually turned out to be a very real (very annoying) wake-up call this morning. Apparently...Thursday is trash day.

But God is awesome and he turned one not-so-pleasant morning into a spectacular day!! In addition to getting to talk to my mom, my dad, my bro, Larry, Haley and hearing from Bobbie...I also had a spectacular evening at school! I'm a nerd.

For those who don't know, I am studying health comm -- which, in a crazy-small nutshell, is all about communicating to people why/how they should change their health behaviors. Because my program is at Emerson, a strictly arts/comm school where sciencey-type courses are limited, I get to take a couple med courses at Tufts University. I had my first Intro to Medicine course tonight with a very quirky, totally hilarious, completely brilliant Dr. Bradshaw.  In addition to learning the medical lingo and understanding basic bio + physiology, part of passing this Tufts course also includes completing our own Lifestyle Transformation Challenge. 

At first I thought the assignment was a little elementary, but the more she explained it the more I came to love the idea--how can I expect to help others change their behaviors if I can't first understand the challenges of experiencing a transformation myself?!?! In the words of Aunt Katy: "DUH!!" She said that students in recent years have chosen to floss more often, eat more veggies, train enough to be in the Boston Marathon and so on. I have a general idea of what I'll be doing, but I'm keeping it to myself until I can figure out the parameters/goals I will set. We have to chart our progress throughout the semester and meet 80% of our goal if we want to pass. I'm super pumped for this, like you can't even imagine!

Mommy, Daddy and Aunt Katy understand this best about me: there's nothing like a challenge, especially one that I can earn a grade for, that will motivate me more!! Wish me luck :) I'll let you in on the details soon!

say cheese,
katy

PS -- Sorry for the length of this one!! Tomorrow's will be short :) Promise!