the cliffhanger's conclusion

and now (dun dun dun), the big life-changing decision. i'm not moving to africa to help small children, but for me it would be a big change. as you probably all know, i hate my job with an unrequited passion (although who knows, maybe it hates me too!), and i have now been considering giving up journalism for some time. it's just not a good scene. there's no real money in it, and the higher you get in the ranks, the fewer pages you actually make, which is my favorite part of the job, and the more people you manage, which i imagine would be okay but not terribly exciting. and i'm frustrated every day by idiots who don't know what they're doing, so i think that moving up in the ranks and not being hands-on to be able to fix their idiotic errors would drive me bonkers. oh, and we get five holidays a year -- that we have to work, cause people need their stupid paper every stupid day, even if it means we have to work christmas or new year's or .. you get the idea. we're not even paid extra for the holidays, all we get is a day off another time. whoop-dee-freaking-do, i'd rather have christmas off than some day another time.

so anyway. these reasons have all led me to the conclusion that journalism is maybe not so much the way to go, along with the fact that i hate the hours, and unless i find an evening paper, these will be my hours for the reset of my career -- a fact that makes me want to cry, because i am tired of not seeing anyone ever. so i've just been putting my zip code into monster, hotjobs, etc, to try to find a job, any job. but lately i've been giving one particular career path some extra thinking, and i emphasize that this is just thinking and nowhere near a plan yet. but i have been considering going back to school and getting a degree to be a nurse. we'll go over the positives and negatives of said plan in due time, but i'll start with why i'm considering it.

there are three main reasons. the first is that i would be helping people, which is something that i may not mention a lot but which bugs me about my current job. i don't feel like i'm making the world a better place, and i figure if i'm going to be here (on earth), i might as well leave it a better place than i found it. that said, i'm not really into flying to third-world countries and/or i just don't have the resources available to do so anyway. i'm more interested in something i can sink my teeth into than any of the numerous fantastic causes that exist, like stopping blood diamond wars and AIDS in africa and world hunger and world poverty and... you get the idea. the point is, i would be making the world a better place. maybe it wouldn't be monumental, but it would be something, and that's much more than i'm doing now.
the second reason is, i won't lie, the money. i know i've been pretty lucky in life, but at the same time, i have been stretching every dollar i've ever earned -- with the exception of the loan i took out when i went to scotland, which i am now stretching every dollar to pay back -- to pay all my bills, and i am tired of it. i recently saw an ad for a manager at smokey bones to make between $40 and $50,o00, and it almost made me cry, because i make $24,700. and i literally can't afford life. jon pays almost all of our bills, and he works 72 hours a week to do so, which isn't fair and makes me feel terrible. he volunteered, but still, i am not a fan. i want to be able to pull my weight. i don't want to be rich, but i would like to be able to pay my bills without worrying -- just pay them when they're due, not when i get paid. i'd like to be able to go to the movies or go to dinner or make a doctor's appointment and be able to afford the copay. i know everybody stresses about money, it's just a part of life, but i'm pretty over it. and nurses make good money.
the third reason is job security. nurses are pretty much always in demand, and especially now, as my aunt (who owns a couple branches of interim health care) constantly reminds me, there is a huge shortage at least in ct and presumably elsewhere as well. i don't have any plans to move out of ct for the moment, but i like knowing that if i did, i could probably still find a job anywhere i go (coincidentally, this drew me to editing too). i also like the fact that my aunt said people/places are so hard up for nurses that you can even get help to go to school nowadays, which would help me out.
a fourth smaller reason that i like the idea is that it would put jon and me in similar fields -- different enough that we're not competing but similar enough that we can share stories and lives. this will also come under the concerns list, though, so we'll get to that.

so. those are the reasons i am drawn to it, and i guess the positives are also covered in said list, haha. so now we'll move on to the negatives/drawbacks/reasons it is still a consideration and not a plan.
1 -- science was always the hardest for me in school. not impossible, but the one i always had to work the hardest at. i think i would be okay, but i know it would be a LOT of work. i mean, i'm not new at school, so i get the concept of a lot of work. i wouldn't have been able to do this awhile ago because i was burnt out, but i think now, with a specific goal in mind, i could do it, i could go back to school. especially because i'm hoping i won't have to take all the gen eds again, just the courses for the actual degree, but i'd have to make sure first. but back to the science. i took ap bio and got a 3 (out of 5) on the exam, so i'm clearly not super deficient in science, but i did get a 71 in both chem and physics -- barely passing. anatomy & physiology i think i could do, because my favorite parts of science were learning about how the body works. organic chem scares the shit out of me, though.. i know i'm smart and i know i could do it, but i am just nervous/scared about the bulk of my courses being science courses when that was the one subject that always held me back and actually made me really work for it.
2 -- i am not good with other people's vomit and poop. which, i think, as kate already told me and i agree, i'd get over it. i am thinking a lot of it is just exposure, and after it happens a couple times, i'll get used to it and move on. i also know that there's a lot of paths you can take with a nursing degree, and i'm secretly hoping to find one that minimizes the exposure to vomit and poop, although i plan to have children some day, so i might as well suck it up and get over it, right? so not worth wasting much time on this one, i guess..
3 -- this is probably the second biggest, after science scaring me, and i touched on this in the good, but it's also a source of concern -- i don't want it to become a competition between jon and myself. i think you all know he's an emt (has been for about 2 years now i think?), and i know how important ems is to him. i also know he's competitive by nature, and i know i am too a bit, and i do NOT want it to become about who's better at what. i was discussing my nursing consideration with him, and he said something along the lines of 'but if you go to school for nursing, i have to go too, because i can't let you become a nurse before i do!' which sort of cemented my fear that this will become a competition. the other thing is that i know i am good at school.. it's just one of those things that clicks for me, and i know school is harder for him, which gives him the mistaken impression that he's not as smart as i am even though he is, and this is why i feel competition over school would be a bad idea. but he is possibly going to medic (paramedic) school in either september or january, and i am hoping that if i go to nursing school at the same time, it won't be a competition, because we'll be in different schools. i am still a little afraid, though, because i think a lot of the curriculum will be the same, but i am just hoping that it will be different enough to eliminate any 's/he got a better grade' or 's/he kicked my ass on that test' or 'why does s/he get it and i don't', etc. the other idea is that by both being in difficult schools that will take up a LOT of time, maybe neither of us will get resentful about how we have no time together because we'll both be busy. i know that we already only see each other on the weekends, basically, which isn't my favorite, but i can live with it, and i also know that i will probably be resentful of his medic class if i am not also doing something that consumes my time and keeps me busy, so i'm kind of figuring that if i am also going to school we'll be okay.
4 -- money. as i already mentioned, i am hoping i can defer repayment on my loans until i graduate again, but this is not something i am certain of.. i'm about 75%, but that 25% is worrying me. if i can't defer my loans, i would have to keep a full-time job, which would make homework, studying and hours in hospitals very hard to do. i figure i'll have to keep a part-time job in order to keep some money coming in, but i am basically planning on taking out loan(s) to make this work. i am also planning to look into what my aunt said about getting help from the state/elsewhere to go to nursing school. the other trick is jon will also be in medic school and needing time for school homework studying hours, etc, and so we had already talked about taking out a loan to get us through that. if we can defer my loan payments, that will help -- about 450$ a month less that will be going out the door -- but that still leaves the apartment & all its fees (electricity, etc), gas money, grocery money.. the essentials. so if we both work part time and take out a loan, it might be possible. we'd have to sit down and figure it all out, though. especially because his credit is bad and we don't know what mine is (i want to hope it's good, but who knows), so we may need a cosigner to get a bigger loan. and then afterwards we'd have more payments to make, but i'm hoping the increase in pay on both our parts will help out with that. so again, something we'd need to sit down and actually do some math, make sure we'd still be doing all right on the other end of this equation.

medic school is about a year, and i'm assuming 2-3 years to finish nursing school (although i really don't know). so yeah. this isn't a snap your fingers and the world changes so much as it is put in a hell of a lot of effort and the world will change slowly. but i guess why i'm posting this so you guys can read it is so you can give me any thoughts, suggestions, opinions, concerns.. i want to know if you think this sounds like a good idea, or a bad one, if you think i can handle being a nurse, if you don't think i can, if you think it will be okay with jon and me, if there's anything i can do to make it less of a competition, ... etc. anything you can come up with, good bad or indifferent, i want to know.. you can leave comments here or email me if you prefer to keep your thoughts private. you guys are all people i trust to tell me the truth, so.. have at it.

love to you all, and thanks in advance for your help! also, i am not really planning on such giantly important posts, so keep reading the blog, because i think usually posts will be whimsical stories and rants, not heavy discussions. woot!