Marie Miller and me

Take 2!

The OT department :) Me, Dr and Mrs Taff, Sarah, and Olivia. We closed that party.

Wow! Tonight was a really cool experience!

Sarah, Olivia (whom I had never met before tonight) and I walked into a room of 140 med school students, and probably 200 donors. We broke the mold, and hung out with some med school students. They were all pretty nice, and it was neat to be able to informally introduce them to OT/OTs. Mostly we didn't talk about school, but they wanted to know what it was, and it was nice that we were able to represent.

It was also great to talk with Dr. Taff and his wife. He was brought on to staff this summer, and is gradually being (I think) fast-tracked to be the new director of the program. It's not often that you have a few hours to just talk and crack jokes with a professor. Usually there's just too much on everyone's plates to ask anything more than a quick question. But here we are, jolly good friends, a year before I'll have him as a teacher.

Andddd meeting Marie Miller, the founder of my scholarship, endowed in honor of her favorite professor from when she was a student there in the 30s. That's right, she was NINETY FOUR years old, completely had all of her marbles (although not all of her hearing, which led to some loud comments during some of the speeches:).

She was very sweet and spunky, which is one of my favorite combinations. She said that when she did OT, it was all in mental health and it was all crafts. I enjoyed hearing about her life, OT back in the day, and Ada Ford Wells (the teacher).

Oh, and I chatted with the chancellor of all of Wash U for a few minutes.

All in all, it was a very candid, fun, and professional night. I actually think that it helped me more than anything in the past few weeks to hone in on my future "OT type personality." It all came naturally and was very professional, yet it had glimmers of "me" in it.

It was a phenomenal experience on the whole. It didn't hurt that dinner was delicious, and I didn't have to do the pots and pans after ;)

I really do love it here.

And posts will probably be slowing down for awhile: so much work, so little time. There were just so many fun, unique experiences today!