my disclaimer: I don't own Lizzie McGuire or any other LM characters. I don't own any of the schools, websites, books, etc. that may be mentioned in this story. I don't even really own the idea for this story…got that from a paragraph in a Madeleine L'Engle book…I only own Brenna and Dr. Hensen.
Amanda Lupin – I promise to work harder on updating in a reasonable amount of time…I have to do that too with some stories; I'll recognize the title, but have no clue what has happened so far in the story! So, I will work harder on that. Thanks for the input!
Kirsten – I have plenty of days where I want to crawl in bed and stay there too! Congrats on getting through o-chem, I made it too…no more o-chem ever! It's a great feeling isn't it?
Gabby – I chant with you…med school! Med school! All I have to say is I'm glad I'm not going…I couldn't handle all the stress! I'm glad you like it.
And I want to thank you girls, and anyone who's been reading, for sticking with this; I know it's going really slow right now. But (I think) I finally have figured out where I'm taking this…took me 10 chapters to figure it out, but hopefully it'll pick up a bit. So thanks for reading, and good, bad, let me know what you think.
Lizzie slowly awoke to the sound of her name.
"Lizzie?" Brenna's voice was slightly muffled through the closed door. "Are you up? We've got classes in an hour."
Lizzie rolled over and groaned. She felt like she had been hit by a truck. Her stomach was tied in knots, her muscles ached, her eyes hurt, and her head was throbbing. The last thing she wanted to do was go to class.
"Lizzie?" Brenna's voice started to sound concerned.
"I'm up, Bren." Lizzie called through the door. "Almost…" she muttered to herself, wanting to bury herself in her comforter again. She listened to Brenna's footsteps grow fainter as she walked away from Lizzie's door and into the kitchen and Lizzie pushed herself into a sitting positing on her bed. The clock on her nightstand read 8:04. This first day of Lizzie's literature class and she had less than an hour to get there. She sighed, dredged up as much energy as she could and climbed out of bed.
Half an hour later, Lizzie had showered, dressed, thrown her hair in a ponytail, downed a cup of coffee and was halfway ready to face the day. She packed her school notebook, her new literature book and her laboratory research notebook in her bag and searched for her shoes. Only after digging through her large suitcase and the pile of semi unpacked stuff on her floor did Lizzie realize her shoes were under her bed. She quickly pulled them on, grabbed her bag and raced to the front door of the apartment, where Brenna was waiting, her backpack in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. She handed it to Lizzie, saying, "It's your lunch. You're gonna be on campus all day." She grinned and practically dragged Lizzie out the door and to her car.
"You're working till five, right?" Brenna asked Lizzie as they got out of Brenna's car in the student parking lot.
"Right." Lizzie nodded. She was going straight from her class to the lab.
"Okay." Brenna nodded. "I'll pick you up about 5:15, I get off at five as well." Lizzie nodded again and they headed their separate directions, Lizzie to her literature class and Brenna to her history class.
Lizzie made it to her class with eight minutes to spare. She grabbed a seat in the second row, looked around and realized she was most decidedly out of place. Though her major was biology, Lizzie had to take a couple of literature and history classes to complete her core education requirements for the university. Looking around, Lizzie had never seen any of the people around her before and guessed that most of them were liberal arts majors. Feeling slightly self-conscious, as if people could tell she was a biology major just by looking at her, Lizzie sunk a bit lower in her chair and pretended to be completely absorbed in her literature book.
Lizzie wandered around the second floor of the biology building, feeling a bit lost. She decided to spend her half hour lunch break talking about her med school applications with the university's pre-med advisor, Lisa Thompson. Lizzie had visited with Lisa several times, but today was feeling a little disoriented and took nearly ten minutes to locate Lisa's office. She knocked on the open door and stuck her head in, hoping Lisa wasn't busy.
"Lizzie, hi!" Lisa greeted her with a smile. Lizzie returned the smile halfheartedly.
"I've got all my application materials ready." She said, seating herself in a chair across from Lisa and pulling an overstuffed manila envelope from her bag. She handed it to Lisa who quickly rifled through the contents, separating the papers into piles.
"Everything looks great, Lizzie." She said with a smile. "You've got your transcripts, academic information, applications. The only thing you're missing is your personal statement. Have you started that?"
Lizzie hesitated. She had started it, but was having a great deal of difficulty putting in writing exactly why she wanted to go to medical school. "It's almost done." She fibbed.
"Excellent." Lisa smiled again. "Once that is done, you'll be able to send everything out. The letters of recommendation are sent directly from the author to the school, so you'll have to let whoever is writing your letters know where you're applying." Lizzie nodded; she had already sent pre-addressed, stamped envelopes to her professors who were writing her letters.
"Then you're great." Lisa told Lizzie handing the envelope. Lizzie thanked her and left. Outside in the hallway, Lizzie paused for a moment, fighting the overwhelming lump that had formed in her throat. She certainly didn't feel great.