The last week at school has simply flown by – each day seems to last about four hours and then vanishes into the next. Classes, assignments and club activities blur together forming collages of half memories; half ghost like images floating around my mind, which try to assemble themselves – occasionally do – and then break apart to continue their aimless float in the front and back of my mind.
During week six I’ve slept more and done less. My reassembled ankle is doing pretty well. Constant stretching in the morning, during class and the evening has gradually helped loosen it up. Next Thursday, the process jumps into hyper-mode with the start of physical therapy. From what I understand, they will thorough kick-my-ass (arse for the UK?) for about an hour pushing my ankle in many directions.
Currently, I’m like a really tired two year old that just learned to walk. I find myself standing up and walking around just for the sheer joy of doing it. My old habits from WVU are slowly returning as well. During my time at WVU, I really enjoyed roaming around campus – often our student union – just seeing and speaking to people I knew. Catching up, saying hello and then moving on to see other people. Now that I have two decent ankles I’m able to start resuming this old habit. It’s a lot of fun and something I’ve really missed.
The oddest thing I’ve encountered since becoming bipedal again is having people I know and presumably haven’t made upset walk past me without saying hello. The first time it happened on Monday, I assumed they were just in a hurry; the second time with a different person I checked my deodorant and did a quick memory scan to see if I had either said something (not uncommon) or did something (also not uncommon) that would have made them not want to speak to me. Coming up empty on both situations I was perplexed.
Deciding to be a little proactive with the situation, I started speaking to people I knew and saying hello. ‘Oh, hi Al, I didn’t recognize you’ became a frequent reply. Or, and this one is the most interesting, one person mentioned how I’d really changed over the last week. I pushed them on the point and they couldn’t really come up with anything other than their perception of me had changed.
My guess is that during all but one week of the MBA people got to know me with a few visual clues: crutches and damn big backpack. So, when the crutches went last week, a lot of people lost the visual clue they used to identify me.
I do feel I’m in a period of huge change – ideas, thoughts, perceptions and confidence comes and goes on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. The overload of the MBA combined with my physical changes has provided me with even more stimulus for personal change and growth. I spent eight weeks having to alter my natural behaviour thanks to the injury. Now, in a way, I get to start anew.
