college

September 13, 2014

My first year after college!

I’ve been a college student for the last TEN YEARS! I finished my bachelor’s in May and hope to go back to grad school next fall, so I’m trying to soak in every moment of my one measly year off school.

Today I made it to the gym, which means I’ve gone for the last 2 weeks without missing any days unless I worked 12 hour shifts (I work 2 of them a week). The gym is closed already when I get off work at 9 so they get to be rest days. It seems so much easier to make the gym part of your schedule when you’re not in school! When I was working full time (and going into overtime on a regular basis so that I could pay my tuition) and then coming home to do school work, plus having my house to keep up, food to make since I try to eat moo-Paleo at home, and have some sort of social life, the gym was always the first to go. I obviously really value being active and healthy, so it really sucks that I let that slip so easily, but sometimes it just feels like something’s gotta give!

It is so incredibly nice to be able to wake up when I want, meander over to the gym for a nice morning workout, and then come sit down and enjoy the world of blogging and eat my homemade breakfast and a nice cup of coffee. My free time belongs to me. I don’t think I even had free time in the last 10 years. I really think every second of every day was taken up by a laundry list of things that needed to be done. This is the first time I’ve been able to just relax on my days off! It really makes me dread grad school, but I really want to get my master’s so I guess I need to just suck it up.

Hard work pays off. But then again, not working so hard really pays off too sometimes. I think in the last few weeks, my cortisol levels have decreased. I say that jokingly kind of. I have no idea what my cortisol levels are. But since I live in a pretty constant state of stress (hello Type A), I imagine my cortisol levels will contribute to a death 10 years early.

I am so envious of people who finished their bachelor’s in 4-5 years and then have just taken the last 5-6 years to enjoy life! I know ended up taking 1 1/2 years off of school because of the Army (by the way- I count this time as my college years because I wasn’t enjoying my life during basic and AIT and my deployment, while it was relaxing, I was definitely not living my life how I wanted) and went a nonconventional route of finishing my ASN (associate’s in nursing) and working full time while getting my BSN, but still…

I bet they have enjoyed far more cups of coffee without some schoolbook in front of their face!

photo 1-6

My mornings like this are the best… And I kind of dread the days where my cup of coffee is enjoyed over research papers and discussion postings.

photo 2-5

And to end this, I really love this breakfast food. One smashed banana, two eggs, some vanilla, cinnamon, whatever… Scramble it like scrambled eggs and it’s the best. These are the same recipe as Paleo pancakes (although I make my pancakes way better) but for lazy people who don’t have time to sit and make them turn into pancakes. It tricks you into feeling like your getting bread for breakfast too because it just kind of has that consistency to me. Satisfies me. I have the best food ideas.

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August 15, 2013

Tuition stress at a new college

I have three classes left for my bachelor’s degree. Principles of biology 1 and 2 with labs and a computer lab that I dropped like, six years back because I sucked so bad at Excel (true story- also the only class I have ever dropped. I felt like a total idiot on our first test when everybody else flew threw creating a spreadsheet for a movie store and I couldn’t even remember something about a key that I needed to even start the spreadsheet). Anyway, I just moved a few miles away from a community college so I applied as a transient to take my biologies in person.

After having a really hard time getting anybody on the phone at the school (almost 2 hours of attempts with no success- talk about irritating) and failing to find any information on the horrible school website about how to actually register for my classes, I decided to give up and just go to the college. So last week I went to the college to register for a class since I couldn’t figure out the website for the life of me and forgot my password. They registered me for the class without explaining how to get my username and password, and the lady failed to tell me that my class would be dropped if I didn’t pay the same day (who does that?!).

Today I decided to return to the campus real quick to pay my tuition and then I’d be on my merry way to LA Fitness to get some miles in since I just started training for a 1/2 marathon. My day had been pretty good up until this point too, except I was starting to get a little hungry and I get super hangry if I have to go without food. Can’t run on a full stomach though, but I figured I’d be done at the school in no time, do 1 1/2 hours or so at the gym, and then be home to cook up something nice for dinner.

Nope. Instead I got to the school and realized they were having orientation for a bunch of 18 year olds wearing really short shirts and leggings. I got in line for financial aid behind a good 30 people and thought that this was ridiculous. I decided that I should look up the number for IT on the school’s website so they could just give me my password so I could pay online. No luck. So I decided that somewhere in this orientation, somebody could direct me.

Somehow I ended up in the ID card office, telling this poor student who was working the camera part time about how much I hated the school’s organization and I couldn’t figure anything out. I thought I was about to lose my mind, but then he taught me how to log in to register for my classes! Luckily I got the only password prompt I actually knew (because naming my favorite movie, book, or TV show would have been impossible since I wouldn’t have known which of the three I named and also don’t even have favorites but that was the second least ridiculous option) and managed to log in.

I used this information to go log in to pay my tuition online. I then found that all of my classes had been dropped. That’s when the nice guy working in the computer lab informed me that all your classes get dropped by the end of the day if you don’t pay for them on the day of registration. Ugh. So I spent another 20 minutes trying to find the CRNs to register again for these classes, which I ended up doing. Then I decided just to pay tuition at the school instead of doing it online.

Got back in line for student accounts and then did some more searching on my phone and realized my fees could be waived for being a veteran but the forms must be turned in prior to fee payment because they don’t issue refunds. Well, that’s $200! I had to go home to get my DD214 to prove my military time and then I got back to the school at 4:30. I sat in line for awhile to turn in my DD214, but the lady had no idea where the form was that I needed to fill out. She told me I could print it out of the student center, to which I asked, “Won’t I have to pay? I haven’t paid my fees yet so I doubt I can print,” and she reassured me that I wouldn’t have to pay cause nobody at the school is a student yet, ha ha (she laughed, I didn’t). Fantastic!

Except that you did have to pay. And I had no money on my card. Of course. Luckily, another nice guy who was working in the student center (and also looked 18) let me use his account to print my form. I returned to finally turn in the last of the forms and the lady then told me that they could reimburse my fees at a later date but I’d have to pay for the class today or they’d drop it again. If I knew I’d have been reimbursed in the first place, then I wouldn’t have gone through all of that today!

I went to pay my tuition at student accounts cause there was magically no line, but then I realized there was no line because it was already closed.

At this point, I was starving and angry because there was no way I could go run for an hour on a starving belly, but I also had too much to do tonight (like blog!) to go run later on.  I angrily decided some days just aren’t meant to run, so I came home, paid my tuition online, and then took Jon to dinner at a Thai place because I was in no mood to cook!

The good news is that aside from books and figuring out where my class is actually going to be located, my hassle with that college should be done until I have to apply again as a senior transient for the spring (it causes more issues than as a nonsenior transient). My other class I’ll take online at my university (for $300/credit hour waaaahhhhhhh), and in TWO semesters I’ll have my bachelor’s in nursing, finally.

Now I need to go reseal the tile in my shower. Let the fun continue.