Heading to the big leagues with a career change. Again.

The end of the semester always has those couple weeks of panic as you question whether you've learned anything that semester, or at least enough to pass the final. You always feel kind of stressed out and the need to study, study, study. Well my miscarriage happened about a week and a half before finals and I had NO motivation to study. So I didn't. Sure, I stressed about it, but I can honestly say I studied less than an hour for all my classes combined. You can imagine my stress as I sat in class getting ready to take finals with my brain screaming, "WE'VE WORKED SO HARD ALL SEMESTER FOR AN A AND I'M PRETTY SURE WE'RE ABOUT TO LOSE IT. WAY TO GO, DUMBASS." Fortunately I did not lose my A's and passed with a 4.0 semester, leaving me with a 3.92 for my overall GPA for my associates degree. This also means that since I did absolutely no preparation for finals, I feel like the semester is not over, like I'm still dreading the long week before finals that is filled with studying.

But it's over! I won't have to do that! My brain doesn't understand that though so I'm in this perpetual state of anxiety in a way. I think I feel this way every time a semester ends and then I start summer school right as it's starting to wear off, but this summer I don't even have classes. Hot damn, it's going to be a good summer.

So this is where I stand with school: I am joining the big leagues (why is there a u in that word?) next semester and am finally at NAU. I will be applying for the nursing program in October (yes, nursing, I'll get to the explanation later) with the hopes of being accepted into the undergraduate program to start the nursing program in January. Then I have two and a half years of that and I have a bachelors in nursing! I'll probably work for a fews years, pay of loans, then go back to school to get my Nurse Practitioners license and do a lot of doctor stuff without having to actually be a doctor with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

You may question my sanity at this point, wondering why I've gone from teaching, to nursing, to med school, to possible naturopathy school, then back to nursing. In the short version, med school is not worth it to me and I'm not passionate enough about it to make it worth it to me. Now for the longer version.

Before I was pregnant, when I thought about going to med school I knew it was going to be tough with a child, but didn't think it would be that big of a deal to have Vince essentially be the sole parent for a few years while I made it through the tough parts. He was fine with that and was willing to compromise knowing that it wouldn't last forever. Then I got pregnant and was like, 'Hellllll no, I'm not having Vince be a single parent. I'd like to raise our kid together, thank you very much.'

I read a lot of forums with women who were in med school who decided to have children, and almost all of them said being a doctor was ultimately the most important thing in their life and that they would make it work in any way possible because it was a lifelong dream. They were ok missing years of their children's childhoods because in the end, they'd be a doctor. Unfortunately, I do not feel that way at all. My family will always come first, no matter what, and I feel like that is not an attitude you can have and successfully make it through med school as a female. How can I say I won't be in class because my child has a kindergarten play coming up? It just wouldn't work.

I lived with my grandparents for a few years growing up and would go back and forth to my dad's house, depending on his work schedule. He didn't want to miss out on our lives so much, but as a single parent, he had to. He had no other choice but to work 24+ hour shifts or overnight shifts. Luckily us kids turned out just fine, but it's not something I have to do. I don't have to go days without seeing my children so I can put food on the table. I'd be choosing to do that, and for what? To say I'm a doctor? That title isn't that important to me and I know I can me a much more useful person as a nurse and make just as much of a difference in this world.

"Why don't you just postpone having kids," you ask? Simply put, I married an old guy and I want babies. Lots of babies. If I were to wait until I was out of med school, not counting residency, that would be at least six years away. Depending on what field of medicine I go into, I have a minimum residency of three years but if I do pediatric oncology, up to six years. So total time, I have 9-12 years of hard work left. That's a million years in uterus time and Vince will be in his mid-late 40s. I've got nothing against older dads, but I'm not going to choose to have my kids have an older dad if I can avoid it because by the time we got to kid two, three or four? Let's get real, he'd be grandpa's age.

So that's that. I'm happy with the decision, though not happy I've taken so may extra classes towards a different major. Ya, I now have an associates, but that doesn't mean anything except extra debt at this point!