My first month of 2023 in Raleigh Fellows was a blast, and was also full of lots of meaningful content. I headed back from Christmas break on New Year’s Day to Lake Gaston, where we had our week-long mid-year retreat. The mid-year retreat was an awesome opportunity to learn about our gifts, our strengths and weaknesses, our motivations, and our career callings. We took our Highlands, EQI and TruMotivate assessments before this retreat so that Bruce Lowe, the expert that stayed with us, would have time to analyze and prepare our results. We then met with Bruce one on one and did a deep dive into the results of these assessments. I found this to be very helpful, as I am still not exactly sure what I want to be doing post-fellows. Bruce told me things that he thinks I need to improve on, tips on how to improve in these areas, and ideas for jobs that he thinks would fit with my strengths and my motivations. We also started our New Testament class in January, which is taught by Edward Dixon. I have enjoyed Edward’s first few classes a lot, and I think his teaching style really helps me learn the material. In our family systems class, we have started working on our genogram project. This project requires us to interview our family members and ask them questions about their family when they were kids. Working on this project has been really cool, and has helped me learn a lot about my family that I never knew. This past weekend, we had the John Richmond retreat where we learned about life lessons and spousal selection. John Richmond is a great speaker, as he has lived a fascinating life and has tons of amazing stories. I loved this retreat because of this great content, and because of the time I got to spend with the rest of the fellows and with the Crutchfields. Although I am scared by how fast this year is moving, I am very excited for February and all that it has in store.