the struggle is real

ah...nursing school.  such an elusive little thing.

donald has worked on the psych unit at ku med ever since he graduated from sbu. he likes it and he's good at it. [like, really good at it] the trick is that there is really only one position you can hold in a hospital with a psychology degree and he already has it. so in order for it to make sense for him to stay there forever, which he would love, the most logical option is for him to become a nurse.

nursing school was already on our radar when we were engaged, and we knew it would be a future goal for our family. however in my naiveté i thought we'd be wrapping things up in the school department by about year three of our marriage. donald didn't want to jump right into school during our few months of marriage, but i figured he'd just need a year of pre reqs and then a year or so at an accelerated program and we'd call it a day. that was so cute of me.

what i have learned is that attempting to complete nursing school as a non-traditional adult student is like trying to lick your elbow. it's nearly impossible.

here are some examples:

after spending two months incessantly attempting to get ahold of the supervisor of the nursing program to discuss donald's transcript were were finally informed that donald, who has a bachelors degree in psychology and has worked in the psychology field for ten years, needed to take psychology 101 before he could submit his application to the nursing program. this information was very conveniently shared 48 hours after the cutoff for enrolling in summer classes. so that was fun.

and while we're on the subject of silly, freshmen level pre-reqs...we both thought college algebra was going to kill us dead. it did not. but it was close.

then this one is my favorite [so far]. without going into all the specifics, as soon as donald finishes his rn program he'll need to begin a bsn bridge program right away. our track record being what it is, we decided to be as proactive as possible and once he was accepted into an rn program we turned our sights to the bsn bridge to see if we could get a jump on things. 

to back up, going into this whole thing there were two classes donald did not ever want to have to take again...speech and statistics.  the bsn program needed a stats pre-req and there was a question as to whether they would accept the credit he had from sbu.  so there was this exchange:

monday @ 2:12pm : your stats class won't transfer, you'll need to take it again .

[panic. sorrow. gnashing of teeth.]

monday @ 2:18pm : your stats class is fine, you don't need to take it again.

[relief. hesitant celebration.]

wednesday afternoon : we can't accept your stats, you'll need to take it again.

[confusion. defeat.]

later wednesday afternoon: oh, i remember talking to you!  you're fine.  you don't need to take stats again.

[blank stares.]

i'm sure that one day [i'd like to say five years, but i think ten is the safer bet] we will look back, laugh, and think it really didn't take that long after all. today is not that day, but i'm doing my best to just enjoy the ride.