I am sitting here all on my own in a very new computer lab and I have finally gotten through all of my classes at least once. This is all so different to me. Being from a very small town myself I am very un-used to the big town and the big schools and the very large campus. To me I am the little mouse that lived in her little hillbilly life and one day decided to travel to the city. This paper is not only the first college paper I have written but also the first paper I have written since High School English three semesters ago and for that reason I find myself nervous that I am writing it so easily. This reflection is supposed to be about the changes I have gone through the differences and maybe even the things I thought would change and have not, well…how much time do you have? To be quite frank this changes thing that we are supposed to tell about has not been something I thought would happen overnight and for me has been happening long before this first semester started here at Aims. Since I graduated from High School in May I have moved out of my home the one I grew up in and left my family. Packed everything I owned into a moving truck kissed my mom and Dad and moved into a four bedroom house in what my mom and I call “cookie cutter land.” That was the first of the big changes. Being from the mountains I am not used to looking into my backyard and seeing three other houses, or opening my front door and feeling like the people across the street can see everything I am doing. Then I have to admit, and how childish this is going to sound, I miss my mom so much. She is my best friend and when I lost her in my life every day I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I felt lost and to be quite honest I felt so different. When the bills started and the two jobs to cover the bills started I actually began to settle in, strange I know the thing that most people hate the most is what made me feel the most at home and the most adult. Then Aims started and that was really the least of my changes. I had classes not four like in High School but still five was not bad, I had friends, and I had teachers and really good teachers too. The thing I found so much easier than I ever thought would be possible was that the class sizes were no bigger than the classes in my little “ho-dunk” town of Bailey. They all were able to fit less than thirty into the door and the teachers actually knew my name. That was so unexpected but the most pleasant of surprises. The only true obstacle I never expected to be as hard as it has been is not having my mom. She is my support system and her being one hundred plus miles away and me not being able to see her and do my homework with her on those days when we would just sit in the kitchen her cooking me pretending to work but really just talking away with her that is the hardest part of it all. That is probably the obstacle I need to over come, learning how to do it all on my own. It is going to be so hard but I know that I want to succeed and I want to make her proud and my Dad proud and everyone else who, to be honest never saw me making it to college, proud. That alone will be my pushing edge and that is going to be my fire and that is going to be the easiest way to get through all of these changes.
Saturday night Mom and I drove to the amazing womens home who donated 200 Alliance 4 Ayden bracelets and got those! We are selling them for $3 each and all the profit goes to Ayden to help him fight his Leukemia. Then That night as mom was at a friends house I visited Alli, Ayden, and Anna who were all doing amazing. Ayden though was kind of moody. To cheer him up we played on the Kitchen floor with Jelly beans and when Alli decided this was not a good idea we began trying to make hoops into each others mouths with popcorn, And as it tends to do with two year olds it got kinda out of hand, we soon began a huge food fight and Ayden was laughing and kissing and we all had so much fun you would never guess he was sick. It was amazing, You are so strong Ayden I love you so much! 
