I'm not sure where to start in telling you about behind the scenes of my life, so I'll start from the beginning of my journey to where I am now.
When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything. I remember times wanting to be a professional runner, pro biker, pro soccer player, rodeo star, cowgirl, electrician, mechanic, carpenter, crazy cat lady, animal rehab therapist, animal psychologist, woodsman, forest service worker, actress, librarian, magician, fire fighter, animal trainer, truck driver...the list probably goes on much longer, but you get the point. I pretty much went through a stage of wanting to be just about everything there is out there. When I was eight or nine my parents took me to a program at the library done by a veterinarian in our area, I decided that night that I wanted to be just like her, an all-animal veterinarian. I stuck with that like glue to paper well into my college years. Of course I dabbled in many of my other interests as time went on.
Most of my life I have helped my dad at his work whenever he needed it, he works as a carpenter/woodsman. In high school I trained my sister's dog, my horse, and many cats. After I had made up my mind that I wanted to be a veterinarian, I started collecting books, learning all I could, treating my animals and giving them the medical attention that was legal for me to give (essentially everything except rabies vaccinations). Some of my friends and relatives started having me treat their animals as well. My senior year of high school I even convinced a veterinarian 20 miles from home (the nearest one) to let me volunteer in his office so I could observe what a veterinarian really does. I loved it and I knew that life as a veterinarian was exactly what I wanted.
When I started college, I was getting such good grades in my calculus class (yes, I was taking calculus as a freshman, and getting 100%) that the professor asked me if I would tutor a couple students. I agreed, and completely loved watching them start to understand why the letters made sense with the numbers. To me it was all a game because I live, breathe, and sleep mathematics. Unfortunately I couldn't stay at that University because I lost my scholarship. I had been taking 18 credits per semester and only passed my Animal Behavior, Farm Management, Companion Animal Care, Introductory Composition, Basic Religion, and Volleyball classes over the entire year (I didn't pass Calculus due to an altercation with the professor followed by an argument on the phone with my mother about my boyfriend at the time). I had failed the most important classes (or gotten too low of a passing grade for them to account for anything), Intro Biology being one of them.
The following summer I got a summer job as a "Youth Crew Leader" in hopes of being able to pay off my previous year of college. My crew and I edged sidewalks; painted signposts, fire hydrants, park benches, the housings for life preservers on piers; did repairs on a local school; picked cherries; and counted left-handed snails. That same summer I was also working as a kitchen cutlery sales representative and essentially sold knives door to door, I knew this was not the type of job I was looking for because I hated the cold calls and having to have my act together in front of complete strangers (I had a terrible poker face and was terrified of having people focused on me and what I'm doing).
After that summer I started school at the local community college where I fell into a job that I completely loved, and for a time it changed all my thoughts about back up careers. I worked for the chemistry teacher in the lab. I was always doing experiments, organizing, prepping for students to come in for their labs, taking care of chemicals, mixing chemicals to make the appropriate ones for the experiments that students were going to be doing. I decided chemistry would be my back up career because it was the only science that was nearly entirely based on mathematics. I worked that job until I graduated three years later.
The summer between my second and third years of community college, the professor I worked for got me a summer job with the forest service as a Wildlife Intern. I loved being outside all the time, the work sometimes seemed a little worthless, but I still enjoyed it. We were doing canopy cover surveys, habitat surveys, wildlife surveys, and mostly just learning how to navigate with a map that doesn't show all the roads that we drive on while still not becoming lost. I loved this job so much that I applied for the actual position receiving pay instead of compensation the next year, but due to diversity issues that office was having I was not hired because I was like 90% of the workers there. Sometimes it really doesn't pay to be a tall white woman.
During the last year I went to the community college, I didn't have enough work in the chemistry lab to fill in my hours, so I was shared with one of the mathematics professors to help with grading. I absolutely loved it. He had given me an answer key to all of the homework and tests that I was grading, but I'm not sure I ever really looked at them because I could do the work in my head faster than looking from the page to the screen and back. It was so much better than grading chemistry and geology exams as I had been doing for the chemistry professor. I decided that mathematics would be my back up career, if I couldn't be a veterinarian, I would be a Mathematician.
After graduating with my Associate's in Biological Science, and barely missing my goal of graduating with honors, I decided I would try another year at a university as a Pre-Vet. I tried a different university than I had gone to my first year in hopes that it was my advisor and my lack of knowledge of how to stand up for myself that had messed me up. I got through one year there, but discovered that I can't handle classes that require large amounts of memorization. I failed Anatomy and Physiology as well as Biochemistry that year. This made me take a step back. I no longer knew what I was doing with my life. I clearly wasn't cut out to be a veterinarian, I tried twice and couldn't do it.
So I decided that I would be a Veterinary Technician, and started looking for schools that I could attend fully online so I could be at home with my new husband instead of traversing the country from school to school getting the top notch education that I desired. I found one that only required me to have a job in a veterinary office in replacement of taking a lab class. So I started pounding pavement. I searched through all the veterinary offices within 50 miles of my house hoping that one of them would hire me. None of them would because I didn't have a bachelors degree in any biology related field.
I was totally crushed, I no longer knew anything about what I wanted to do with my life. I could be a mathematician, but during my previous year of school I was counseled by a Mathematics professor that I shouldn't because the only job I would be able to get would be teaching, which wasn't what I wanted. I ended up getting pregnant, which gave me a reason to take a year off of school, and I got a job at a retail store in their restaurant. That was nearly two years ago and I'm still working that job because my husband's job doesn't pay all of our bills. I'm still not sure I really know what I want to do with my life, not entirely sure I want to be a teacher, but what I do know is that I have an 18 month old that will need to go to school someday and I don't want to rely on the school system to give him all that he needs educationally. I want him to make something of himself and do what I never could, make a life for himself and his future family that doesn't involve working yourself into the ground just to stay less than half a step ahead of the bills.
Last winter I decided that I would look into getting into a fully online Elementary Education program, especially if there was an emphasis in Mathematics. I found this program at only one school, all the rest needed me to be on campus for one or more classes. So I enrolled and have now completed three classes (this school does one class at a time). I'm actually fulfilling my dream of getting honors as I have a GPA of 3.9 right now, I've also contacted my school's chapter of the National Honors Society to join (another dream of mine). I feel like I'm finally on my way to something good, though my husband no longer agrees with me that I should be in school. I'm not happy that I had to take out my first loan, and I have to pay for a few things that I'm just not finding the money for at this point, but I know that if this is where I'm supposed to be, the door will open. However, in my experience, it usually waits until the last second before you run headlong into it, or just after you've been pounding it with your head a few times.
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