The Beginning: Part III - The End of the Beginning

Looks like my posting frequency is going to be about once a week. Good enough for government work, so it's good enough for, well, no one, really. I’m over it.

OK, let’s finish up the boring catch-up stuff already, shall we?

Where was I? Oh, I believe I was at the part where I had yet another epiphany regarding what the hel – I mean heck – I want to do with my life (see? Caught myself – all ye naysayers!).

I don’t know exactly what kicked off this whole thought thread, but I can clearly remember driving home from a weekend at my folks in PA, doing some thinking (and more thinking and some over thinking, too), when I realized that the path I intended to take may not be the right one after all. [I know! Go on!]

For one thing, trying to earn my Masters degree while working full time would take me roughly half of forever to complete. Who’s to say that this animal behavior trainer lady is even going to be around when I’m finally done with the whole she-bang. Secondly, just who is this chick, anyway? Who’s to say she has any street cred when it comes to animal behavior? Maybe there’s a reason that this is a subspecialty in the veterinary field.

Having made enough mistakes with my life thus far to satisfy three normal lifetimes, I’m not exactly enthused to go around making an even bigger mess of my life by making cut-corner, dumb decisions. So what, then, is a girl to do when she wants very badly to have a career working with animals? Field biology is out – I can’t deal with things that have eight legs. I know, I’m a taxonomic bigot, but spiders are freaking creepy. Being a vet tech or vet assistant is also out – while being among the noblest of professions, in my book, the salaries of those particular occupations will simply not be able to withstand the rigors of my Coach habit. OK, forget the Coach habit. You can hardly exist on those salaries; God bless those who somehow pull it off. They obviously don’t live in Northern Virginia (notice there how I capitalized Northern – we’re our own state here. Oh, wait, no…we just get taxed like it! *Rim shot, please*).

Anywho, back to my dilemma here. So I analyzed this and analyzed that (Billy Crystal not included) and determined that, if I could maintain the grades that I have been so far, screw it, I might as well go to vet school. Pretty lofty, plan, right? It sure goes along way to ensuring that I quit changing my major, which is handy and a bit more cost effective. It also seals my fate to eternal indebtedness as vet school tuition is NO JOKE expensive. For example, in-state tuition and U of Penn is $30K. Per year. That’s roughly $140K after four years of tuition, books, supplies, etc. That does not include housing. Awesome. I’m gonna mortgage my future. But whatever. That’s the price you pay for wanting to save the world, one guinea pig at a time.

So, there it is, the quick and dirty version of where I’m headed, what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. This way, when you read about me traipsing around in the woods counting bird nests, you know why I’m doing it. I’m not kidding, that’s what I did this weekend. More to come later.

OK. That's the last boring background posting. Thanks for humoring me.

BFN.