"A change is gonna come"

Let the summer begin! I just got my grades online about an hour ago and wow, was I shocked! 4 A's and one B+. That's a 3.89 GPA for my hardest semester yet. I really don't know how I pulled it off. There was so much work that I rushed, half-assed or simply didn't do.
I had the pleasure of watching my sister's graduation this weekend. It's weird to think she is done with school forever (now that she has her master's with no intention of going for a doctor's). It's even stranger to think I could be in the same position a year from now. Which brings up the eternal question, "what am I doing with my life?" I could be absolutely anywhere in the world a year from now doing just about anything.

I've decided it would be "fun" to work for a sports or bike company in China. There is a huge market for sports there, with a growing disposable income. I feel like it could be something really good for the country, as many people deal with the social pressures through negative mediums such as alcoholism and suicide. It also would be great to promote women's cycling there. It's the only country in the world where the suicide rate of women is higher than that of men. Suicide is also the leading cause of death for people under 35 within the country. In my experience in China, it seems there exists an abundance of social pressure to achieve an unobtainable amount of success. I have seen cycling help a lot of people through a variety of difficult situations, including myself, and I would love nothing more than to be a part of promoting that therapeutic freedom and happiness gained from the simple act of riding a bicycle.

Anyways, that is the future and for now I'm still having a hard time believing the semester is really over. After all the tears and sleepless nights I feel as though a giant burden has been lifted. At the beginning of the semester there was the messy break-up in Europe. Then I lost my job, a good friend, several bike races, and nearly cycling altogether. Combine all that with a seemingly impossible load of academics and you can start to see why I often found myself at the brink of mental and physical exhaustion. It was within all that loss and fatigue, however, that I began to discover who I really was (and wasn't).

So, one more year and I don't know where I'll be the next. One more year and I can't believe how far I've come in the past three. When I filled out the paperwork my sophomore year for the double major it seemed like an idea, another form and something of the future. The past few weeks, that future and that dream have started to become a reality. I'm really going to do it.