So wow, this has been a great last weekend as a grad student—equal parts mellow and fun. I even slept in until 9 this morning!

• Lunch with Mom when I was passing through NJ for a doctor’s appointment Saturday
  

  tilapia & funny little salad with lots of picked veggies

• A friend’s Bday dinner here (I will definitely be attempting to recreate the kale caesar salad I had as an appetizer—so good) and drinks here
• Coffee at this new place, which kind of feels like an airport hotel lounge—in a good way
• A surprise Neil Young binge that’s gonna take a few days at least to shake

Tomorrow I’m graduating with my MS in Clinical Nutrition & Dietetics. In some ways, it almost feels like my first day of grad school was last week (it was actually 4 years ago today), but in others, it’s like it was a lifetime ago.

5 years ago, I moved to NYC to be with a guy I’m not even in touch with anymore, thinking I’d do my freelance writing and part time PR job until I found something in publishing. Hah! If someone had told me I’d feel compelled to seek out a job with an alternative health care practice and decide to go back to school to study clinical nutrition because of ghostwriting a Chinese medicine blog, I’d have laughed.

The main lesson I’ve learned is that when you follow your intuition to what feels good and what feels right, it’s hard to go wrong, even if it’s not always easy or doesn’t make sense right away. I can’t lie, it’s been awesome—lots of good surprises along the way. I love what I do, and even on the stressful days, I usually still feel like this: 

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down, ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

—John Lennon

Cheers to that. Thank you, thank you thank, you for all your support and encouragement along the way.