Adaptation

As a biologist (I can say that instead of biology major now!), I've learned a lot about adaptation mostly in my Ecology and Evolution classes. I wrote an entire 20-page paper on how whales share a common ancestor with deer, and that whales are essentially deer that decided to return to the water. Thousands and thousands of years after the first deer-like thing and his friends decided they liked swimming more than walking on land, we have what we know as whales. They adapted everything from the water-tight skin to the blowhole. It's all very interesting.

But I've had my own experiences with adaptation. For example, when I was 10 years old I moved from the small town of Lynchburg where I attended a modest, private elementary school to a public school in the significantly larger Henrico County. It was at that ripe age that I learned how to adapt. I've been doing it ever since, and while I usually get nervous about it, I have to say I'm pretty good at it. Whenever I start a new job, I have this horrible feeling that I won't be able to understand anything about it and will be doomed to be a failure from day 1, but this never happened. When I went to France for the summer, I thought I would never adjust to this land across the ocean, but I got the gist of it in about a day and a half.

Now, as I've mentioned about 30 times in previous posts, I'm in nursing school full-time and working at the Italian restaurant where I've worked on and off since I was 16 (yes, with that job I thought I would never get the hang of it, and I certainly did). I started both of these responsibilities 2 days after graduating from Longwood University and moving back into my parents' home. I have definitely felt overwhelmed re-learning my job and experiencing a new school with new teachers, new assignments, and new students who I will spend more time with than anyone else for 15 months.

It's been almost 4 months since all of this began, and I've really gotten into the swing of things. My grades are stellar, I absolutely love my job, and I'm paying off school way faster than I thought I would. All in all, I'm pretty proud of myself. But now that I've adapted to this way of living, I have a full day off and I have NO idea what to do with it. It's funny how a few months ago I would have welcomed a day off and now I'm bored out of my mind.

But then I guess whales wouldn't be too happy to go back onto land after these thousands of years either.