This picture was taken at 4:30pm.
That would be the sun, doing down, in the middle of the afternoon.
Being this far north of the equator does weird things to the sun. Like, even at noon, the sun isn't directly overhead, but it's it's off at like a 20* angle south. Which makes sense, really. I remember my brother's first two years in college while I was still in high school. He was up in Spokane, Washington and would complain about how early the sun would set. I didn't get it until I found myself on roughly the same longitude as he was.

Jill recently posted a blog about who made her life worth living, and it got me to thinking about how I would answer that. And I thought about it for a couple of days and this is what I came up with:
1) One of our post-surgery soccer guys. Every single time he is done with rehab, he'll walk over, look me in the eye, and say, "Michelle, thank you for your help today." It doesn't matter if I went though every single one of his exercises with him; did his joint mobilizations; watched his gait re-training; and just smiled as he cussed me out while I did soft-tissue mobilizations (read: very painful deep tissue massage to get rid of all the knots and scar tissue in his quads, IT band, hamstring, and groin) then apologized for his language and told me to listen to his actions, not his words when I was done. It doesn't matter if all I do is throw a bag of ice across the athletic training room at his face when he's doing with his rehab. He thanks me, sincerely, every day.

2) A freshmen this year who looks so much like Drew, but with brown hair, I can't help but hope our children look as adorable as him; and who I therefore have a intense maternal protective instinct for. Sometime in September, he walked into the training room, came to me, and asked if I could take a look at his ankle, which he rolled the previous day in practice. So I did an eval on his ankle, and it was simply a grade 1 ankle sprain (grade 1 = nothing torn, just some ligaments stretched). I explained everything that had happened, and that if we just tape it up he should be fine for practice, which I then did. For about two weeks, he would come into the training room, come straight to me, and let me know how his ankle was doing. He would tell me how awesome the tape job I did was (half regular athletic tape and half of a more flexible tape that most of the soccer team prefers to all athletic tape) and if any one else offered to tape his ankle, he would politely refuse and ask me to do it.

3) Another post-surgery knee guy. He comes into rehab every day smiling, and never complains about anything. He's always asking questions about his knee, his ankle, his hips, his cells, why scar tissue is building up, why there is still swelling, why his muscles have shrunk so much, how his PCL graft works because it was a cadaver-graft, how his body processes energy, how come he can't flex his knee more. And I love that he asks questions everyday. I love that he asks me why I'm doing Athletic Training and Physical Therapy, and asks what he, as an Exercise Science undergrad should go to Grad School for.

4) The freshmen who looked at me like I was a god after I helped them stretch out a tight groin/hamstring/calf/back/quad.

I'm so glad I got to work with Men's Soccer this year. It was such a good experience for me to realize that, Yes, Athletic Training and Physical Therapy ARE what I want to do for the rest of my life, and being able to help these guys brings me such a sense of joy and belonging.
I can't wait until this is my life. I get to do it almost every day now, but I have to time it around classes and my fellow ATS's schedules. How awesome will it be when I get to this on my own time, and not have to worry about the Physics test I have on Thursday? Very awesome. Oh, and they will pay me to do it, which is also pretty cool.