Education and my File Cabinets

As you all know, I am in Nursing school, if you didn't know, you know now. My life and education has been an ongoing thing, which I believe is the way it should work. I have always been a good student. I don't mean "super intelligent" student, what I mean is: I'm a good student. I take on everything in my life in the same way....as a new experience and as a learning experience. I'm not sure when it happened, maybe about 5 years ago when I started the project of going back to school as an adult. I came to this fabulous realization, as I wrote out the check for my classes, that I am the ONLY person who I need to answer to with this endeavor. I was going back to school to LEARN...not to appease my parents or because I had to, but because I wanted to try something different and instead of waiting around for somebody I know to hand it to me with training included, I said..."let's see what I can do about learning something new". It was, and is often stressful...but mostly....it's fun. Everyday, I actually learn something new....yes NEW. I didn't pick classes that I all ready knew how to do, I went the complete other route. What was the worst that could happen? Down a few $$$ and quit...Not me though, I'm not a quitter, I'll go down with the entire ship, but that won't happen....because, you know what, when you go to class, listen with adult ears and follow through with homework, low and behold you LEARN.

The most amazing part of this life path is that I have my own respect. I wonder to myself how people go through their adult life, never changing jobs, or attempting to learn the new technology. How are their brains staying strong? I'm guessing they are not. I would love to challenge people to take a class on stuff you have NEVER done before and see how great it feels at the end of the day. I'll give you an example. A few years ago I had to take Medical Terminology. It was literally a foreign language, some 10,000 words, prefixes and suffixes, base words and Latin. A one hour, once a week class of all of this and I filled notebook after notebook...but now when I see dysmenorrhoea, I know it means painful menstruation....see?
I can do school...I may not be the A student, but who cares? Would you rather have the A student nurse who makes a 99 on every test, but can't remember which side of the body the heart is on, or the c+/b student, who has empathy, can do math,lived a real life AND remembers which side of the body the heart is on. I want the real person...who knows where to get answers if she doesn't know for sure...not just someone who learns for the class.

Well this post is getting long...Go take a class, earn yourself a little respect (especially from your kids) and do it for your brain.