Back to school....

My desk is piled high right now with my nursing application admissions......schedules of classes for summer semester.....

Yesterday I left early for work to stop by school to get the catalogs and applications; my heart beat just a little faster when I walked in the doors--I didn't realize how badly I'd missed it until I was there.

Last fall, due to a changed rule when I was first accepted into college, I got a real blow: I would not be eligible for clinicals as I had not yet taken the Regents Exam. I would not be grandfathered in--no matter the fact I have taken the courses (and passed all with an 'A') that it would take to satisfy a Bachelor's degree.

And now--months later, I am down to sixty days from the deadline to apply for clinicals. I'm trying not to automatically assume I'll get it. I don't want the disappointment again; even though, if I don't get in, in September, I'm sure to get the January matriculation, and it's more time to satisfy requirements for my Bachelor's degree. But......I look over the application, and there is a growing hope: 3.8 GPA, Phi Theta Kappa, SAT scores that are well above the required score to get into the program........and the Regents? I blew it out of the water.

Hope springs eternal.....the desire to get this over and done is tangible. I can touch it, taste it, see it.....

I actually miss the mental strain of studying. I miss the note-taking; I miss the stories, I miss Carey to my left in class. I miss the plastic chairs, the smell of the lab, the acronyms we use to memorize concepts; and I even miss the Kreb's Cycle. That's pretty bad.

I miss using words like 'pathogenicity' and 'necrotizing fasciitis' every day.

Work hasn't helped all this pining for school lately. Just after I stopped at the school the other night, I drove the rest of the way in a daydream about May and my return to classes. Only to have to explain why we can't process a refund on a toilet that is visibly stained with--well, what I study at school. Oh, God, I was wishing for a truly disgusting Microbiology lecture about that time.

Bill is starting to see it, he says-- I watch Dr. G, Trauma: Life in the ER, and Mystery Diagnosis with a religiosity and a--for lack of a better word--hunger. That's the only word that can describe it. And he asks me: What are you going to do when school is done? The answer is simple--go through the 16-month Master's program. And then.......who knows? I have state core curriculum under my belt and LOTS of history credits that I can't transfer to a nursing degree; I'll be about 35 hours from a Master's in history, too.

Nursing three shifts a week, and teaching college history a couple days a week? Don't put it past me.....