Leaving the Nest

In early 2016, my good friend Chase Kahn found out that he had been accepted into med school. He was a 4 year teammate and 3 year roommate of mine at Macalester College, we're pretty close. Over the years we've gotten ourselves into and out of quite a bit of trouble.

Naturally, when your buddy gets into med school, a congratulations is in order. After catching up a bit, Chase explained that he was celebrating by quitting his job as an EMT and spending a few months in Copenhagen where his brother lives and mixing in a bit a travel along the way.

We mentioned how cool it would be if I took some time off and joined him somewhere in Europe and while it was fun to think bout, it seemed a bit unrealistic.

It wasn't the right time. I had already used up the majority of my vacation so what was a going to do, quit? No way. I had just gotten a raise and more responsibility at work and needed to stay around to keep climbing.. right? On the other hand, my lease was about to be up and I was already having thoughts of moving to a new city. Plus, how often will I have a trusted copilot available to travel with?

'What ifs' quickly turned to 'why nots.'

I quickly convinced myself that this was an opportunity that I couldn't let slip.

The hardest part was breaking the news to my boss. I felt a strong sense of indebtedness to the guy for allowing me to gain such invaluable experience in so little time. Luckily, he and my other co-workers were surprisingly accepting of my decision. Many even insisted that they would put me in touch with agencies with openings in other cities whenever I decided to return.

That made me feel infinitely better about my decision.

So that was that. My flight was booked and my apartment was empty (shoutout to my sister for letting me store everything I own at her house for an undefined length of time).

My roommate and I decided to throw a little move out party. Apartment 425 would never be the same so we rounded up our favorite people in Nashville and celebrated the end of an era. After settling on a theme, we grabbed a frat party's worth of supplies and acted like degenerates for a few hours.Læs mere