It's funny how life can change in a year, and how we change with it. This time last year I was still holding my breath for the Peace Corps and wondering if it would be little more than a two year gap between me and the same question of "now what?"It was this time last year that I really began asking myself where I was going. I was five months out of college, deeply uncertain about the future, and struggling with isolation. But in the midst of it, I began to suspect that I wasn't really waiting for my life to begin, as I had believed, but that I was already living it.

A year later I work for the woman who reaffirmed my belief that human beings can rise above their difficulties to become better people. I am working with young children who once made me so uneasy and who now inspire me to really think about the value of every moment. I am a graduate student in a program that is giving me real skills instead of theories. And I am engaged to a man who makes me excited about the prospect of the rest of our lives.

I am no longer "surviving life," I am embracing it.