Introspection...

...and possibly a change in plans.

I suppose that merits an explanation since I started this blog then abandoned it for three full years. I started college as planned and showed steady progress. I even took classes every summer and loved them. Everything was going really well until my husband and I decided to have our fifth and final baby.

I thought I could handle the pressure (along with the full time job I'd picked up that semester) without a drop in my grades. I was wrong. The fact is, I failed every class this last fall with the exception of Calculus and this past spring I did little better than average in all my classes. This puts med. school... off. Actually, it pretty much takes med. school off the table..

So... now what? It's time for some of that introspection. What do I want to be when I grow up? Over the past few years, I've often made the joke that if I can't get into med. school I'll just have to run off and become a geneticist or a chemist (insert fake sad face and exaggerated tone of woe). Neither of those things (or cell biologist, or physicist, etc) sounds bad. I'm sure I'd love any job I managed to get as long as it's in the sciences but the letdown is hard. I was so determined, so sure that I could do it. Despite all the disadvantages, poverty, a bunch of kids, the fact that I never finished high school I thought I could do it. I was just that damn smart. I was special. Turns out, I'm not that special. I've learned that if I can't attend the class, I can't ace the class. I can barely get a C. I'm not even really sure that textbooks were meant to be used the way I've been using them, as your only source of info as opposed to as a supplement for the lecture.

In any case, I'm stuck here for a while. I'm taking the summer off to spend some time with my kids and my beautiful new baby. I'm taking no classes and my goals are a refreshing change of pace. I plan to blog five days a week and write another novel (at an hour a day five days a week). I also plan to learn Statistics and Multivariate Calculus (both of which I wanted to take at the college but just don't have the credits for) using textbooks and Khan Academy.

Other than that, I need to take this time to just breathe a bit and reevaluate my goals. I've learned a lot about myself in college. I'll never, for example, be really happy as a stay at home mom, I love the sciences and I'm passionate about research. Now I just need to put all that information together and use it to build a brand new vision for the future. Easy peasy, right?