I know that it is an opportunity that I have wanted for almost forever but at the same time it scares me because now I really have to make some decisions about my future. There are several programs that I am interested in, two of which are the Registered Nursing program and the Registered Health Information Technologist program. I have considered nursing ever since my mother went to nursing school while I was in high school. Instead, at that time I applied and was accepted into an apprenticeship program at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. I completed the four year program which also included a Certificate in Electrical Engineering Technology but honestly I hated working there and after I had Jessica, I promptly quit. I did last ten years in a field that I never dreamed of being in, which was as an shipboard electrician. I never liked it and never felt like I fit in. I guess part of it was that when I went into the apprenticeship women had only been accepted into the program for four years. I was like a three headed monkey in a cage. Women caught hell there because prior to 1976, only men were allowed to apply and enter. Women were still a novelty. Now there are women on board all of the Navy ships working both in the civilian and military aspect. Then, it was so few of us. I guess being a girly-girl it just made things doubly hard. I always felt like I had to prove myself because I was a female.
I think this mindset has always been there through out my other jobs in my life as I always felt like men just tolerated women and that we were there to do the "womens work" and all of the true decisions fell to the men. Even now, I hate it when clients come into the office and I can tell them the answer to their question but they still want to talk to my boss, as if he is going to tell them what they want to hear. It makes me want to slap someone silly sometimes. Why is it when a man gives you an answer it's golden but if a woman does it should be checked and double checked? Maybe I'm just in one of those moods tonight. I don't think men actually see it that way, but it's the way I see it and since this is my blog, I can voice my feelings and if someone doesn't like it, well it's just too damn bad.
Back to the subject at hand though, I guess I will figure out what I need to go for and I do have about three months to think and ponder. I hope I don't ponder too long though because I would like to get some sleep. One does need sleep to function in this world. I need to keep in mind that whatever I choose it's going to have to be something that I can support myself with for the rest of my life. My husband will not live forever and I cannot count on any insurance proceeds since I have signed them over to the state to help pay for my husbands care in the nursing home. That is something else that is rankling (I don't know if this is a good word but it's the one that I'm using tonight) me is that I have to keep my income under a certain level so that I can qualify for Medicaid so that he can continue to have the care that I can no longer provide. It leaves me in a Catch-22, I can barely make ends meet as it is and I am always one step away from disaster. If my car breaks down, or some household catastrophe happens, how in the hell am I going to pay for it? Really and truly, this is the best time in the world for me to go to school as our lack of income helped me get this financial aid but in all honesty I also hate being in this position. Oh well, enough of that. I'm gonna pull a Scarlett O'Hara again and think of it another day. It will be there, nothing will magically change as far as that is concerned. The point is that I can now go to school and that is all that matters right this minute.
On a lighter note, our dear little Katybug informed me this last week that she was "evicting me from my room". Those are her words and yes she used them correctly in a sentence as in "Auntee, I'm evicting you from your bedroom so that it can be turned into my Tinkerbell room." Shoot, evicted by a two and half year old!! She double-whammied me Saturday morning when she crawled into bed with me and I told her that "See, there is plenty of room in here for both of us" and her response was and I quote "there will be even more room in here when I kick you out". How can such an angelic face come up with such? Is she two or twenty-two?
I don't care if your kids are nineteen and twenty or two, they still say the darnedest things.
I hated working at a bank and telling a client one thing and then have them go to my male boss and have him change it for them, grrrrr!
ReplyDeleteSusan