going back to school

After much debate with my finances I have deiced to go back to school. I went to a local jr college here in the early 90's, got GE certified and went off to SDSU. I really thought I was going to love my major, speech pathology, as I had gone to a speech therapist twice growing up. To me this meant I had an idea of what I was getting into...oh no I did not. The course work at an undergrad level was killer. Out of the 4 girls I meet during orientation for my major, only 1 graduated in it. The other 3 switched majors and I left school altogether.

I studied my booty off and my GPA dropped from 3.7 to a 2.8 in one year. I had never worked so hard for such negative results ever in my academic career. After another year of pushing thru I decided to switch to my minor, psychology, which I enjoyed. However at this point it was a case of to little too late. I was burned out on school, the room mate from hell and dating life. I decided to take a leave of absence from school and move.

I do not regret that decision, it was right for me at the time. Coming back to my little town of Shangri-La was good for my soul in a myriad of ways. I got to live on my own away from my big support system of friends. I found jobs that kept me in that beach lifestyle, even if they didn't satisfy me in my career goals.

In the past year and a half I have gone thru some big changes. I was let go from the job I worked at for 6 1/2 years with very little sentiment from the company. I got bad news health wise about a friend, then got good news about the same person. Went thru a cancer scare of my own that in the end was nothing, but I could live without doing that again.

All of this made me stop and think about what I really wanted from my life. I am not one to want for much, I live fairly simply, don't want for that fancy car or big house, but rather to be happy with my life. My current course of crazy restaurant work was not making me feel happy or as if I was moving ahead at all. Since I had so much free time I decided to start looking into what choices education wise were available for me. I found that Cal Poly has an adult degree program that I could attend classes at night. The application process is already started, the fee was only $35 and if I get financial aid it could be very doable for me even with my current budget. My mom is so excited at the idea I am sure she will even offer to assist me financially, which I will not turn down. I am quite excited actually at the idea of going back to school. I think the past 10 years were a good break and now I am doing this because I want to, not for family pressure or any other reason. Oh, and if I get all my paperwork done fast enough...I could start on March 30.