2014: Day 14

Day 14: A Life Goal

When I was little, I dreamed of someday becoming a surgeon or a pediatrician. My mom would often catch me watching Trauma: Life in the ER on tv and would quickly make me change the channel because that show is scary-gross. But surgeries always intrigued me.
A huge part of me wanted to help other people but there was a part of me that just thought it sounded really cool to slice somebody open and sew 'em back up.

Then I was sent to ANASAZI and I thought, "Now that's what I want to do someday!" So when I graduated, I enrolled in psychology classes among my other general studies.

Then I got married and school became an after thought because we wanted to get pregnant pretty quickly.
And we did.
And we now have two children.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I thought about starting school back up again. How hard can it be with two young kids, right?
But it never worked out because I had just become a stay at home mom and I didn't want to give up any of that time with my children.
Then a year and a half ago, something changed in me. We started seeing a marriage counselor and she was a mother. I often wondered how she could juggle both lives. How could she live two successful but opposite lives? And it was then that I realized people jump in head first and do hard, scary things. They take risks and a lot of times, those risks pay off. Mothers can accomplish things just the same as anybody else. Even single mothers.

So a year and a half ago, I decided to sign up for school but it took me a while to get in to a counselor and kick start everything so the summer of 2013 is when I signed up for my first classes. Petey and I started school within weeks of each other and there was a lot of change in our home including but not limited to: kindergarten routine, college routine, separating in our marriage, the baby I watched moving to Minnesota, and Spidey starting up some playgroups and things to stay busy. August was a blur, as was September and most of October.

But we survived and that's all that matters! I took English, Math, and 2 Psychology courses and ended up with two A's and two B's. Not bad for the hectic semester that it was.

So then December rolled around and I realized I needed to get signed up for my next semester. Since there are no other adults living in my home, it was hard dropping the kids off to their dad 3 nights a week and not picking them up until 10 or 11pm so this semester, I started morning classes while my sweet, sweet, SWEET mother watches Spidey and my friend keeps Petey after school for 45 minutes.

Today was the first day and everything went smoothly. I couldn't believe it. I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude for the help people are willing to give.

So I'm a full time student. And I have a very specific long term goal and that is to get a bachelors degree in Psychology and a masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy.

I knew what I wanted to do my senior year of high school. I knew what I wanted to do the whole time we were in marriage counseling. And now I'm lucky enough to be making those dreams a reality. It's going to be scary and hard and time consuming and stressful but I can do hard things. And this is the year I choose to be brave.

To that little girl, so full of dreams: I hope you're proud of who you are becoming. Because you should be.