We're about to get personal folks. Almost a year ago I got out of a long-term, long-distance relationship. It was not a good breakup. We had been together for about 2.5 years, and when it ended...well, I wasn't happy. However, not too long after the end of this relationship, I realized a few things. The first was that I had been limiting myself because of this other person. The second was that now that I was on my own, I had so much more available to me. The third, and probably most important thing, was that holding myself back to keep someone else happy was never going to make me happy. Since then I have expanded my graduate school search to span the entire country (instead of only the places that this person would want to travel to with me), I've decided that I want to continue my education to get a research doctorate in my field of study (instead of selling myself short because I wanted to keep the other person happy), I have decided to apply to a summer research program (8 weeks at the University of Maryland!), and, of course, joined Alpha Delta Pi (which I never would have done because it would have taken up valuable time that could have been used to visit the other person). I know that if this relationship had not ended when it did, I would not have had these life-changing realizations, and I would not be nearly as happy as I am not. So I guess the point of this long winded post is that just because you hit a bump in the road, it doesn't mean that the road is ending, in fact, it may be opening up into a huge road full of opportunities.