I'm officially a student again

I've been debating for the last 3-4 years about what I'd like to do with myself once the kids are both in full time public school. Before I was a mom I was a 7th grade science teacher. I LOVED teaching middle school science. The kids are awesome and at the perfect age to really inspire them to love the study of science and all of the amazing things to learn about the earth, our bodies, space, how things move and work and how our world is held together. I truly do miss teaching but I do not think I'll go back to the classroom once my kids go to school.

Truth be told, I always wanted to work in the medical field. I thought about it while I was in college the first time but decided to pursue teaching instead. Well now that the kids are older and my youngest will be in Kindergarten in a year (unbelievable) I've really come to think about what I'd like to do with the rest of my life.

And last week I made my decision. I've been praying about it and Ryan and I have had many discussions and I decided that what I really want to do is to go to Nursing School.

I attended an informational meeting at a local community college a couple of months ago to determine what prerequisites I'd need, how long it would take me from start to finish, the cost, and what the schedule would look like.

Anyone who knows me knows that my first thought was the cost. Ryan and I subscribe to the Dave Ramsey philosophy of money ~ We are Debt Free and we don't take on debt so we had to start thinking about how we were going to cash flow nursing school. We are using some of our tax refund from this year to start the "Nursing School" fund and my parents have offered to cover all of my pre-requisite costs (Thank you so much Mom and Dad for such an awesome blessing!). So we will add it into our normal budget each month starting now and take any and all money that we can find and put it into the Nursing School fund. If we are very diligent and pay attention we should be able to swing it. I'm also going to look into any grants that are offered for the more mature student :)

As for pre-reqs, I think that the only classes I will need to take are Anatomy & Physiology I and II. As long as all of my other courses transfer from Texas Tech those will be the only pre-reqs that I'll need. Once I'm done with my pre-reqs, I plan on applying for the Nursing School's ADN program ~ hopefully in the Fall of 2011. It's a 2 year program and it's pretty competitive but I'm up for the challenge.

That being said - two weeks ago I applied to and was accepted to the local community college and Tuesday, June 1st at midnight I signed up for my first pre-req class - A&P I.
Starting at the end of August, I will be going to class once a week from 4:30-7:20pm followed by the lab from 7:30-9:30pm.

While I'm definitely a bit nervous about going back to school, I'm super excited to get started.