Odd.

Today was the last odd day, as well as Yearbook Day.

I guess my odd classes are less nostalgic; Stats was uneventful, as was World History, though did I accomplish yesterday's goal during the class period (I'm still waiting for the effects, if there will be any). In English, a group of girls and I played a Scrabble game that consisted of making nonsense words all over the board, sending us all into whimsical laughing fits, and in Med Tech, I successfully drew some kid's blood with a butterfly needle. My hands were physically shaking as I popped the Vacutainer, and my victim even commented about it. I need to be more confident, or my patients won't trust me. This year, I've realized that I give myself away through the involuntary motions of my hands- when I was just beginning as a medical assisting intern, I remember my hands trembling uncontrollably as I took my first set of vitals on a patient in the office. He noticed and kindly asked if I was new, which just made me feel worse. I know from experience that all it takes is practice for my hands to calm down, but with phlebotomy, it's hard because my practice equates to someone else's pain. I'm beginning to realize that if I want to be a phlebotomist, though, I can't allow myself to feel so terrible about hurting people. I mean, I'm practiced on all the time, so I know venipuncture doesn't hurt, but it just rips something inside me when I poke through someone's vein, especially when I don't get any blood.

I'm on a few pages in this year's yearbook for Model UN & HOSA, as well as in the background of an AP shot. I cut in line with my little brother to receive mine, and got to signing right away. I'm pretty sure I got everyone I wanted to sign my yearbook, and reading people's comments has made me smile. I can see everyone's personality through their words, as diaphanous a covering as cellophane over brightly colored candy. We are all people now, with our own opinions, beliefs, dreams, philosophies and ideas- the obscuring dust of teenage conformity has been brushed away to reveal our vivid, newly blossoming selves, which we celebrate in our words to each other, solutions composed of each person's relative concentrations of humor, specificity and sweetness. With epigrams and epithets, we immortalize this day in characteristic scripts, transfusing tiny bits of our radiant selves into the open veins of each other's final yearbooks.