Look Ma, no hands!

I had my first session with a client.
While I, of course, cannot go into detail about anything due to confidentiality and frankly, human decency to this person's privacy, I can say that I thought it went pretty well.
I was so incredibly nervous beforehand. So worried I'd blank, say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, offend my client, look unprofessional, unprepared etc.
About 15 minutes into the session I had this realization of "Whoa, you're really doing this. This is actually happening, this person has real problems and you're sitting here across from them, doing what you've been preparing all this time for"
It was a pretty surreal moment for me. One I hope I never forget the feeling of. If I make it out of grad school, and eventually onto my own practice and am doing this multiple times a day, 5 days a week I know it will be so easy to forget this feeling. This empowering and yet completely humbling and  proud feeling. I never thought I'd ever be where I am today, especially with how close I was to dropping out after that first quarter. And now, here I am, one year in grad school completed and seeing clients as a student therapist.
I know not all days will feel like this, I will have difficult sessions and run into issues I'm not prepared for and I'll mess up and handle things incorrectly, but as for right now... I'm kind of a little proud of myself for making it this far. I have oh-so-long to go, but I've survived up until now.
I've officially seen my first client as a student therapist :) Whoa.