Nursing School-First Semester Recap

I survived my first semester of Nursing School! Yay me!

I have a HUGE binder full of notes already! WOW!

What did I learn the last 4 months? Here's a tongue in cheek recap:

• If you go to the hospital and you have to have a Foley Catheter put in, don't be surprised if the Student Nurse assigned to your care is all excited to "try this on a live person"!
• In the world of Nursing School, getting a 90% is a B. Why? That is so mean.
• If you are in the hospital and have to choose between having a Foley Catheter inserted in your urethra or a Nasogastric tube up your nose, pick the catheter, hands-down. Don't ask why. Just trust me.
• There are things that make young people sick that cause dementia symptoms in older adults. Why would a urinary tract infection cause dementia? Who the hell knows, but if your elder becomes suddenly confused, that might be one cause.
• To be able to do the things that nurses do that involve bodily fluids and may be unpleasant aspects of the job, nurses have seriously twisted senses of humor. More proof that I have picked the right profession.
• I am already making what I hope will be lifelong friendships. There is no joke there. I just really have a lot of affection for almost all of the people I go to school with. Getting through a tough program like this is as bonding as sharing a foxhole. Only with more pee.

Thanks to all my supportive friends and family for putting up with me in full stress-mode the last few weeks.

School starts again on January 26th.

My Love/Hate Relationship With Authority

Here is a sketch (sorry for the poor quality scan) of one of my high school English teachers, Mr. Ballor. As far as I know he is still teaching at Alliance High School, to the delight and consternation of his students. When I was in his class I made his life a living hell.

I really liked Mr. Ballor, but I also hated him. I had major problems with authority at the time. It could be argued that I still do. I made it a priority to annoy him, even though he was one of the coolest teachers I ever had. He ran with the bulls in Pamplona, rocked the major mustache, and was generally full of wild stories.

I think I wanted to impress him with my writing ability, but it was not to be. I took journalism from him (as well as English and Humanities) and he delivered the news to me that he didn't think I had a knack for it. He told me, in fact, that I would never make it as a journalist because I was too much of a poet. I stormed out of his class and dropped it that very afternoon. I was so hurt, and it sorta stuck with me.

I think that when I was working as a freelance writer and food stylist I actually called the school and left him a sort of "neiner neiner" message that I was, in fact, doing just fine as a journalist, thank you very much. Big deal. I never heard back.

I sometimes wonder what he would make of my writing now. I wonder what I would make of his opinion. I wonder if I would still think he was cool, considering he is still in Alliance, and I have been traveling all over.

He's just one of the many ghosts from Alliance that I will probably never see again, since I don't venture back there. Just a random thing that crosses my mind when people tell me that what I want is impossible.

I think to myself that if a "mere poet" can work at a newspaper against the stated odds, then why can't I do whatever it is that I am being told I cannot possibly do? Neiner, neiner, authority. I point my middle finger in your general direction. I would love it if I had your approval, but if I can't have it on my own terms, then I will just have to approve of myself, and the rest of you lot can get bent.

Whoo Boy-Midterms!

I have been living this monastic lifestyle for half a semester, with mostly good and some mixed results. I am not immune to stress, by any means. I am doing much better than I thought I would by now, but exams always get my goat to an extent. And the midterms are going to fill my life for the next 8-9 days. There are four exams: 10-13, 10-14, 10-16 and 10-20. Ack.

I have made very little time for friends and family, and for the next week it is worse. I made sure I got in some quality time with Tony and Little A this weekend, especially today. I feel guilty for being so emotionally labile and holed up in my office or the Library down the street, or gone because I am out walking to try and manage the stress. Sheesh!

And what time I am making for people, I am so disordered because I am all business about school so that brings a strange intensity to how I interact with my friends. I want to figure things out, settle them, get them in order. That isn't my job to sort them out. Sorry guys.

Maybe not during winter break, but next summer I think I need to tour some theme parks and ride roller coasters and act like a big kid a little to shake off all this serious. Holy Moly. I have a headache at the moment and just the thought of cotton candy makes me a little ill. I have had very little sugar in my diet lately.

Where should I go? Great America? I haven't been there in ages. I used to love to go with my friends in high school when I was still living in Palo Alto/Los Altos. Anybody wanna go with me?

We are talking about taking Little A to Disneyland next summer sometime. She'll be four then and should get a kick out of it. Or she'll be tired and cranky and we will lose our minds. Who knows?

I am so "Ipso Collapso" right now: so stressed I think I am going to fall down. Thank goodness that even though I complain about the pressure, I tend to do just fine, academic-wise. It isn't luck or natural genius, I just work my ass off.

And speaking of my ass. It is smaller. All my dang pants are falling off me. No time to shop. This is silly, but it is a problem I don't mind having. All that working out is doing something. Even Tony noticed that there is less of me. Whew. About time, too.

I'm just trying to abide, like The Dude says.

Nursing School-A Kinky Day In The Lab

I have to laugh sometimes at the nursing school curriculum. We have to learn all the things that nurses do, and it turns out that is a pretty broad spectrum of care concepts. On Tuesdays I have my skills lab, which means from 8-5 I am practicing the technical aspects of my new craft.

Todays lesson: Learning to tie restraints and how to give a bed-bound person a bath.

The upshot of this is that at school today I got tied down to a bed and then washed by a classmate. A male classmate in my case.

We all took turns and everyone was being a pretty good sport about it. But we have all only been in the program together a few weeks now, so we don't know each other well. We know each other a lot better now. Enough that my lab mates (Scott and Michelle) played a practical joke on me and put a plastic penis off of one of the dummies into my prep kit. Sillies.

We actually had a lot of laughs today. Much better than last week. We are all trying to keep our spirits up, but a lot of people were pretty distressed at the results they got on the exam on Monday.

I, by the way, got a 90% on it. Yay me! I'm pretty pleased with that score. Not bad considering that the morning of the test I went to the gym and spent some time talking on the phone to calm my nerves rather than last minute cramming. Thank you to the people who listened to me stress out and jump from subject to subject. You know who you are, and I adore you.

Manifesting the Future

You absolutely cannot get what you want if you don't know what you want. Because you cannot ask for what you want if you don't know what it is. This belief is at the core of who I am. Because I spend perhaps an inordinate amount of time in considered introspection (otherwise known as navel-gazing) I usually know what I want out of life. And I often get it, just not always in the way I first envisioned it.

In one of my notebooks, I wrote a list of qualities I wanted my child to have. I wrote it sometime in early 2006, well before Little A came to be a part of our family, before she was even in foster care. I rediscovered the list when I cracked open the notebook to use it for a personal journal and place to write poetry. That list describes Little A in startling detail. It is uncanny, really. I got exactly what I wished for.

"Be careful what you wish for." That is what people say, right? I think some folks use that as an excuse to abstain from wishing, to avoid the consequences of getting something they wished for frivolously. I take a more discerning attitude toward it. I am CAREFUL what I wish for. I still wish for things, but I am very specific about what I want.

I met with one of my academic advisers today, and she asked me to think about what I want for my future, beyond the day-to-day goals of getting through the nursing program. I had lots of ideas at the ready for things I wanted for myself, which I think surprised her a little. She told me to write them down, which I will do. I need to organize my thoughts first, because I realize that some of my goals are amorphous and I don't want to write them down before getting specific about them. Because I won't set my sights on something unless I really intend to get it in its fullest capacity. Otherwise, I should put my energies toward wanting things that I can commit to fully.

One of my areas of interest concerns my academic goals for after the nursing program, especially what direction I want to take with my BS and MS or MA degrees. I will be making an appointment with someone in the next few weeks to discuss a plan for that. I realized that I had been pooh-poohing some of those dreams as impossible. My adviser looked me right in the eye and told me that as "brilliant and articulate" as she finds me, that my most cherished aspiration could in fact be totally doable, but I would have to start planning sooner rather than later. I intend to live on that compliment for at least a week.

Of course, back in down to earth terms I need to focus on studying for an exam on Monday. No use counting those chickens yet. But for someone to tell me that I can have something lofty that I want if I work for it was really gratifying. And it reminded me of my list. I have the power in me to, perhaps not predict the future, but to manifest it.

I don't know what is going to happen, but I know in vague terms what I want. Time to get specific and write it down. I need to write a new list for myself and put it away, like a letter to my future self. The letter will begin:

"Congratulations, Stacie! You have accomplished the following..."

Good for me. And good for anyone who is with me when I get there.

Now, what to put on that list? I am open to suggestion, so get your requests in now. :)

How's that whole "being healthy" thing working out?

Um, yeah. I have been sick with a nasty cold and sore throat/cough/laryngitis for a goddamn week. I feel really worn out and can't seem to regulate my temperature properly. Unfortunately, there isn't much time for resting, although a bit more than there was while I was working full time.

Since most of my time is spent studying, you would think that was restful, but it is hard to focus your noggin while on cold medicine. *grumble*

On the upside, I have still managed a lower-than-last-week level of exercise. I figure the fresh air does me some good, so I took a 2-mile walk yesterday while the prep for the balloon races was going on. I wished I had my camera with me, because as I was walking, hot air balloons were landing all over my neighborhood. They were right over my head a few times. There were probably about 30 of them within a few blocks of my house. It was pretty cool, and I just had to smile. I wanted to jump in one and see where it took me.

I'm going to try to make it to the gym tomorrow. But first I need to do a little shopping. My pants are falling off because I have lost weight and need the next size down, and I need a new bra that won't be *look at my tits!* obvious under my white scrub top when I do my clinical rotations. I need a slightly smaller bra, too. (Don't cry yet, my breasts are still epic huge, my band size has gone down, though.)

I was sorta stuck on the whole weight loss thing for a while, but then I made a bet with a friend to lose 25 pounds by the time I graduate in 2010. I actually need to lose a lot more than that, but 25 pounds seems maybe doable. I lost 2 pounds this week, so that is a good start. Fancy that, the old "eat healthy food and work out more" plan seems to actually work.

As for my mental health, I am trying hard to remain positive, and so far I am doing okay. They are doing experiments on us up at school. We hook up to a monitor that measures our heart rhythms for "coherence" and we get a score based on our ability to enter into a consciously controlled state of calm. It is like meditating, science-style. Despite the fact that I am a known and notorious spaz, I got a respectably high score. The idea is that if we tap into coherence often enough, we can do it at will and for longer periods, even while, say, taking an exam. The goal is to have fewer students burn out of the program. It is a trip. I felt pretty calm and centered for a while afterward. I wanted to hug people, even though I spent much of the day solo. It should be interesting to see how this fits into my plans to get through the next two years with as much stress is on my plate.

Art-wise, I have been writing some sorta personal poetry these days. Not surprising considering my introspective mood lately. I do have the submission guidelines for a pretty major web zine sitting on my desk. I can submit up to three poems for consideration. I don't know which ones to choose. I suppose I will pick three that suit me at the moment and send them off and see what happens. It would be pretty cool to get a national byline for poetry like that, but I am in no way counting any chickens there. I would like to publish a few poems in the next 12 months. It would be a good way to keep artistically active. That and it seems like a masturbatory exercise to either only post them on my blog or just scribble them in my notebook and do nothing with them.

I have written hundreds (maybe over a thousand?) poems in my life so far. I even threw a stack from high school away at one point. Or maybe I burned them with that one diary and a bunch of correspondence from my days as a semi-professional crazy person. It seems to me that if I am going to produce that stuff anyway, I should probably do something with it. There is also a possible chapbook idea circling my noggin. Again, I would need to cut the wheat from the chaff to do that, and I just don't have time or enough objectivity to do that now. Might be a good project for next summer between terms.

That is what is up with me. How are you?

Day One: Shell Shock

Oh my! I am going to be one busy little camper! I feel a little like the photo above after going to my first lecture class.

Mostly it is that I am still figuring out what my ultimate schedule will be. I have not gotten my "sea legs" yet.

Yikes.

Breathe, Stacie, breathe.

Nesting

Check out my cosmic egg, people.

Things are going to change, big time. After an extremely long quasi-gestation, I have this: an egg. Rather than a live birth of my new world, it is going to come in stages. I'm looking at the next few years as a time to nest and keep this egg warm until it hatches.

The original cosmic egg was thought to contain many varied things. Multiple cultures have used this symbol in their beginning-of-the-world mythos. Some eggs contain sea serpents, gods and goddesses, and light. In some cases, the bottom half of the shell became the earth, and the top the heavens or the sky.

Mine contains a Nursing degree and a new career where I will make more cash and use my brain in new and interesting ways. As a bonus, all the things I am about to learn will doubtless be incorporated into whatever art I will make along the way or after I am done. It might be safe to say that I will be a largely new person once this is complete.

In honor of this change, I am putting a plan together to enhance my health and well-being. My life is going to be pretty structured, and it is going to take some pretty strict time management. I am building exercise and healthy eating into my schedule, as well as what little free time I have for family and friends, and maybe the occasional bit of contemplative solitude. I am going to take care of myself to the best of my ability. While I may be up for the occasional cocktail, more than likely I will be in hermetic aceticism, at least until my summer break in May. Better still to bring me coffee. I am going to need it.

I will likely still blog as a way to let people know what is going on with me, and you will still be able to e-mail me, etc. Please drop me a line from time to time to remind me that I am doing this for very sound reasons. Remind me about my cosmic egg if I get discouraged or overwhelmed. There are bound to be some unexpected things in that egg along with what I anticipate. I'm looking forward to seeing what they are.

What I want for when I grow up

It has been pointed out to me in recent weeks that I am an artist. Like, really an artist. Not just a dabbler with a day job. I think I really have been longing to hear that my whole life, and I am deeply grateful to the people who have taken the time to tell me. It is more rewarding and wonderful than being thought to be beautiful, or even smart, although it may encompass both of those things at times.

Now that I am really close to unbuckling myself from the daily grind that is my day job in favor of going to school for nursing for the next 2 years, I am starting to feel the surge of momentum that is bringing me closer to my goals, and that is a real rush.

Not that being a RN is my big goal. Far from it. The RN thing is merely a better, higher paying, and more flexible and portable "day job". What I really want to do is explore my horizons as an artist and how that relates to my interest in helping others make art.

I am not sure what shape that is going to take, or even if what I want to do will work in Reno. It all started with my "Writers' Dungeon" idea that I didn't have the time to really get off the ground. But I want to create a "creating studio" space for writers and artists from other media to work in a supportive and focused environment. Not a "support group" per se, because talking about making art is not the same as actually making art. I would want to have as part of that regular "salons" where the art can be shared with the collective and/or the public.

I got the idea in part from the San Francisco "Red Room" concept, (http://www.red-room.com/) but want to expand it to include the visual arts and music.

Like I said, I don't know if Reno is really the place for this. It would thrive more in a more cosmopolitan city like Seattle or San Francisco or some locales on the East Coast I can think of. I might even be able to launch a kind of virtual equivalent to start with, but I like the idea of being at the forefront of community building as much as I like creating my own art.

Writing is a largely solitary exercise, but promoting it from that place is really hard, and getting over creative blocks is hard without friends/peers to support you.

I have to spend a lot of time doing science for the next 2 years. But you need to know that this is where my heart is. Sometimes I feel like I am going to need to live forever to accomplish all that I want to do with my life.

I am open to suggestions, but mostly I just wanted to thank the people who believe in me. It matters to me, and I am grateful, and I love you.

Sacred or Profane?

I'm a combination of prodigy and late bloomer. When I was super young, I had a natural talent for some things, particularly in the realms of spirituality/sixth sense. My gaze had a way of unnerving people with something to hide. Some grownups found me to be unaccountably creepy even when I was being cheerful. Unlike my cousins, you were more likely to find me with my nose in a book than outside playing softball. If I did go outside, I was just as likely to be talking to a tree as another person.

For a while, the way I was different mattered to some people, either in that I had some spark of wisdom about me or I was totally crazy. Or both. For a few years, I was about as disconnected from everyday reality as it gets, all without the expense or legal troubles that accompany those who take drugs. It was wonderful and miserable at the same time. I was like one of those crazy Hindu savants on a good day, and on the bad days, well, yeah, not so much. As you might gather, it kinda depended on whether I was in an accepting environment or not. Much of the time I felt genuinely haunted, as much as a person can resemble the haunted Tower of London on the inside. I had some accomodating friends who took care of me essentially. While I am grateful to them, it has rendered those friendships unbalanced, perhaps for life.

On a few occasions, I delved into my natural inclination for Eastern thought and New Age hoodoo and really got somewhere with it. I managed to become both more grounded and more profoundly connected to whatever force animates me. I got a little full of myself, perhaps, but at least I had perspective. Whatever spiritual forces were at work on me had some meaning and I felt more at ease with it. I meditated. I came up with some framework for how my head worked. I started to act (be?) more "normal". I learned how to shut the door on those clamoring spectres and tried to get on with my life albeit with a late start.

Cut to today.

When I went back to school for my nursing program prerequisites, I didn't know I would have such a knack for Biology. Go figure, I'm now doing as well at science stuff as I used to do well with other more creative things. My lab reports amuse as well as inform. I get a real kick out of doing things you can actually PROVE.

But something has happened to me in the intervening years vis a vis my spirituality. I was already agnostically leaning, but something has happned to make me utterly disconnect. Not in a haughty, "I'm a scientist now, therefore athiest." kind of way, but in ways that make me almost as uncomfortable as being too connected did.

I feel like at least one turning point came to me in the Anatomy lab. I had really worried about how seeing and handling the cadaver was going to affect me. However, unlike some of the other students, I took to it with ease. Some of them thought I was creepy because I was willing to be in there with him for long periods by myself. There I was, back to being unintentionally creepy, for totally different reasons. Or maybe the same ones?

You know what was comforting? There was this dead man, and there was no LIFE in him at all. While I had feared that I would find some remnant of who he was clinging to him, there was nothing, only the facts of his biology. He had a stent in one of the arteries of his liver. The first time I held his heart in my hands, I felt really grateful to him. Here was a guy who had given his body so that I and countless others could learn something. That's awesome. We were all really respectful of him.

But as I have moved into a place in my life where I have been under a lot of stress, having even a pinch of simple faith would be handy right about now. And I lack it in a way that feels like an estrangement not only from my old friends but from God/Goddess as well. My mother keeps telling me to pray, but I feel like I did such a good job of closing that door, that now I find myself outside it, dying to get in but terrified to knock.

I'll forge ahead, regardless, even if it isn't very good for me to be as coldly scientific as it was to be floridly spiritual. I also don't want to look back on my past and see nothing but pathology there. As such, I find I just have to not talk about it, or not talk to people who frame their view of me with the timber torn from my temple.

Maybe that longing goes away in time. Maybe if I spend more time in the presence of the empirical, the logical, my yearning for a place in the mystical will fade. I fear that it won't, mostly because other things or people I have longed for are still with me.

Somewhere outside that fear is likely where the truth lies. I'd hate to be the world's most uneasy athiest, because to deny that God exists is a lie I don't dare tell myself. I know for a fact that there is something out there, outside the permissions of my consciousness. Just because I can't hear it speaking to me anymore doesn't mean it doesn't whisper, hoping I will strain to listen.

Firefighters Wanted

Know any firefighters? Especially from San Francisco?

I'm doing some research for my next writing project. I want my protagonist to be a big, strapping fireman, and I need to research what it is really like to have that job/lifestyle. And I want to set the story in San Francisco, because I love it there so much. New York has the iconic fireman status, but I don't really know New York as well.

I also need some good sources about antidiluvean (pre biblical flood) cultures and lore. Particularly about Nephilim and angels.

Also, has the whole storyline involving the "Angel of Death" been done, well, to death? I have this good idea, and I really like it, but I want to put a unique spin on it if possible. I'm going to read some similar books to see if I can add something to that mythos.

I'm trying hard not to psych myself out on that score. I work in spooky urban fantasy for the most part. Supernatural and spiritual themes run all through my work. But lately I have stalled out on new projects partly because I have had that "nothing new under the sun" feeling about some of the ideas I am having.

That may at least partly be due to lack of confidence. But I am willing to take my time to research this one well and develop strong plot and character outlines first. I don't want to jump in and get muddled around the middle like I sometimes do. Although I do think it is funny when my characters get painted into a corner and have to find a way out.

Bush burns the Royal Alexandria Library!

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/20/iraq_roundtable/index.html

Great, but long article in Salon today about the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad and of some of the world's most important archaeological digs. I'm going to break my own politics embargo to talk about it.

One of the first things that happened in this misbegotten war that made an indelible impression on me was the ransacking of the National Museum. Since I have an interest in history and archeology and anthropology, the looting of treasures from the ancient world caused me intense distress. This is in every way the cradle of human life and civilization. Mesopotamia, and Southern Iraq in particular is where the earliest record of human recorded history, of evidence of math and science and poetry, have been found. Even the garden of Eden is supposed to be in that neighborhood, the rivers Tigris and Euphrates passing through it.

I remember going out to lunch with a friend at the time, and saying to her that this was the worst cultural devastation since the burning of the Royal Alexandria Library. That the loss of those artifacts, hundreds of thousands of them, represents priceless information about the origins of human civilization that may never be recovered. I was gutted over it. If I recall correctly, she misunderstood my concern and admonished me that some old pottery was not as important as the human lives being lost.

True, "The Epic of Gilgamesh" is not a person. It also will not render oil if you squeeze it, or explode if your fire it out of a gun. Sumerian religion is profoundly Anti-Christian in a lot of ways, and contains goddesses who are dynamic and powerful in their own right, and exult in their sexuality as well as their prowess in battle. Inanna wasn't any body's meek and modest mother. She was a fearsome and powerful spiritual force.

But if not for the Sumerians, we wouldn't have the Bible. Much of the Old Testament and early Jewish lore is generally believed to have been cribbed from even earlier Sumerian and Assyrian works. They had a flood and everything. The similarities are staggering.

That the modern world turns its back on this cultural genocide just makes us more vulnerable to the barbarism that precipitates actual genocide. Losing the clay tablets buried in the earth robs us of a piece of our humanity. That our leaders don't understand it is a travesty. It really shows what their priorities are.

After all, people don't render oil when you squeeze them, either.

Nurses Eat Their Young!

Let's face it. People are cannibals, and nurses are the worst. You would think that taking care of the sick would require a gentle disposition. You would be wrong. You have to be part sadist to want to learn how to start a foley catheter on a man.

I have long heard it said that Nurses eat their young, meaning that as new nurses come up through the academic system, they are placed in the care of more experienced nurses for training. Often, the abuse sets in right there, with the older nurses behaving spitefully towards the new ones. The book in this photo is a real book that Kathleen Bartholomew wrote about it. Nurses joke about it all the time.

What gives? Is it because nursing is a traditionally female profession, and women are just bitches? I have met a lot of nurses over the years who are absolute pit vipers. One of the nurses I work with is so damn mean, we have to warn all the new people about her. She also smokes like a coal factory. Gross.

When I think about this, it makes me a little ill. I have one of those personalities that seems to make me a magnet for hostility. I wonder how much of that crap I am going to have to swallow. I am notoriously snappish if I get picked on, and backing me into a corner makes me come out fighting like a rabid wolverine. I run with scissors, dammit. Don't mess. But that doesn't do wonders for my career. I'm trying to better myself here. Sometimes I think I was better off as a chef, where people just expected me to be tempestuous and cranky.

I mentioned a while back that I have a great interest in Anthropology, and that I was considering a degree in that if the Nursing program I have been killing myself to get into doesn't work out.

Then Minya told me that the UNR Anthropology has more snakes in it than the Well of the Souls. That the atmosphere is very catty, and that the professors gang up on students they don't like. Fucking great luck for me. Now I really don't know what to do. That bothers me. I thought that was a good Plan B. I may still look into it and try my luck with the Anthropology cannibals.

In either case, it appears that I should get out my recipes for "long pork".

Adventures in Academia

Having survived my finals in the most lopsided fashion possible (Aced Political Science and Tanked Math), I managed to pass both of my mundane but mandatory classes this semester. As predicted, I knocked the cover off of the Political Science class with a very high "A", and struggled with even the most basic aspects of my Math class, passing the class with a lamentable "C". I usually get straight-A's, but not this time, alas.

I think I may be in one of the last generations of women who were told that boys are good at math and girls are good at "softer" subjects. I bought that one hook, line, and sinker. I loathe math and anything that looks like it. I have female friends, like the uber-brilliant Kari, who are whizzes at math. Not me. I'm some kind of liberal-arts throwback. *slaps forehead*

I called about the letter I got rejecting me from the Nursing program. It turns out it was only one of the two programs I applied to, leaving me to wait until perhaps March to find out if I am accepted to the program that commences in September. Feh. I had to turn in my application in December, and they need three months to figure out if I fit in? Grrr.

Still, I was treacle-sweet to the Admissions and Records woman when she called me back, even though I despise her. AND she called me at like 7:30 in the morning! That's a tad early, dontcha think? I thanked her for her time and seethed in private. This one woman has so much control over so many goings-on at that school that it actually scares me. She's like Santa Claus, deciding who gets the academic lumps of coal and who gets the plums. Only not jolly, or fair for that matter.

I am taking the next semester off, and while I wait (until MARCH!!?!??) for my nursing program acceptance (or not), I will contemplate my academic options. I'm going to go up to UNR after the winter break is over and see about their Anthropology program.

It seems scary and more than a little pathetic to consider changing majors at my age. I love Anthropology and research and all those musty old bones and things. I could see myself being very happy doing that. But the job market is a bit thinner for medically focused anthropologists, I would bet. At least if I get my RN, I will always have work, although my feelings when I envision being a nurse are not as rosy and romantic.

Should I change again? Is there some mental way I can do both, and get scholarships to pay for it? I feel all doldrummy (that can be a word if I make it up, right?) about my strange, fragmented career. I feel like I should have my shit together by now. I'm a late in life parent, so maybe I'm a late bloomer in other ways, too.

Stacie of the Lost Ark?

I was mentioning to someone the other day that, even after all these years, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is still my favorite movie of all time. If it is on, I will watch it. I am sorta interested in the fact that they are doing a 4th movie, but the original will always be the best one.

The Reasons:
1. Dr. Jones is one of the most amazing characters ever brought to life. He has that rugged and yet brainy thing that is totally sexy. I was so young when I first saw this movie, but I knew there was something special about him. I felt my first pangs of real sexual longing over this movie. I don't think I knew what I would do to him, but I wanted to do something.
2. Harrison Ford.
3. Non-lame female Lead: Marion could drink you under the table and then punch you in the gob. Not very good at hiding from monkeys, though.
4. Totally gross, face melting ending. Cool!
5. "Asps. Very Dangerous. You go first"

I wonder how many people my age watched that movie and then promptly decided to become archaelologists when they grew up? I wonder how many actually did it? How many grew to have an interest in artifacts and digging in the dirt with a tiny spoon and a soft bristle brush? In other words, rather than dragging from a whip from behind a truck full of Nazis, did the real life of an archaeologist actually stick?

I wonder this as I stare in amazement at the rejection letter from the nursing school I applied to. Me, with my respectably high GPA and work ethic that is fueled by a likely case of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Some bullshit about not meeting program requirements? I think one of those requirements is kissing the ass of the incompetent head of Admissions and Records who has at several critical junctures given me bad advice and then denied it later. I may, very possibly, be blackballed and not even know it. Given the national nursing shortage, the fact that nursing schools are turning away students is totally lame.

Assuming of course that I pass my Math 120 final tonight, I will graduate with another AA degree from that ramshackle community college where I wanted to continue on in the nursing program. I might find myself an academic free agent. It might be time to reevaluate my academic plan.

Not that I won't keep trying to get into a nursing program. After all, I do have a scholarship already lined up for it. But if I keep hitting roadblocks like I have been, it may be more trouble than it is worth. I was only doing it because RN money is pretty good. But other things about nursing make that job look like a real pain in the ass.

Not that I am considering archaeology per se, or even swashbuckling adventure in the antiquities market. But I do love Anthroplogy, archaeology's culture-focused cousin. Medical Anthropology in particular fascinates me. So while I am taking next semester off to ponder my choices, I am also going to consider a distance-learning program at a University in Wales. I'm also going to UNR to ask them what majors I might be able to complete in the most expedient amount of time.

All I know is that I am through with the rinky-dink educational settings. I want to do something that really sets my soul on fire. Life is too short to do anything less. As for the money, I am sure I would be able to secure funding if I really need it.

Who knows, maybe someday my spunky, underage driver sidekick might tell me, "No time for love, Doctor Ferrante!"