Ashlee's First Day

A couple of months ago I went on a country writing retreat with my writing group. One afternoon we were writing from prompt cards, and these were the prompts I got (you could choose which ones you wrote about from the two that came out for each option):

Characters - Ice skater/pharmacist

Character traits - excitable/perfectionist 

Conflict - unfair competition/jealously

Location - empty beach/college

Object - antique vase/squirrel

My bestie is a pharmacist who is going back to college to study as a mature student. I knew immediately what I had to write. And in 10 minutes this is what I came up with...

Ashlee was looking forward to her first day at college. As a mature student she didn't fit the considered norm of the other students finding their way around campus on that exciting first day. 

She'd had a kid straight out of school and taken a job as a pharmacy technician to pay the bills. She soon found herself being a single mom and had always wanted to go back to her studies, but never had the time or money. 

When her daughter was old enough and wanting to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional ice skater, Ashlee found herself not only wanting to be able to realise her daughters dreams, but her own too. 

She was such a perfectionist though, and she wanted this to be the perfect college experience. She'd seen so many movies set in high school and college. The high school ones certainly didn't match her reality, so she wanted this to better her expectations. 

She was almost jealous of the kids whose intentions were just to party and get laid, whereas she actually wanted to learn. 

A squirrel made her jump as he crossed her path while she made her way through the grounds, forcing her to stop for a moment. She took a deep breath and told herself, just enjoy the moment.