The Deep Desire of My Heart

I love being a nurse.  I love the unit I work on (although staffing can be absolutely horrendous sometimes). And I love the coworkers and patient population that I work with.

But I always had a desire way deep down in my heart for something else.

I just want to be a mom.  A stay-at-home mom.  A mom who has the time to help her kids with their homework every night and have a fresh loaf of bread baked when they get home from school.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a path for every woman; and there are plenty of woman out there with thriving careers who are out there killing the mom thing.

But that's not what I want for my own life.

While I was growing up, my mom was a stay-at-home mom; and looking back I had a stability in my life that many kids didn't.  I always knew that my mom would be home when I got home from school.  And that there would likely be leftovers in the fridge from the meal she made the night before.  If I needed help with my homework, she was there.  And I always had a ride I could depend on whether it was for volleyball, knowledge bowl, gymnastics, or softball.

One big road block to continuing on my current career path once I have kids is that I like working nights and have no plans to ever live that day-shift nurse life, unless its clinic work.  I have multiple reasons for this.  I am very much a night owl, although I love being up early.  Also, night shift just has a different culture, things are a bit slower and you get to know your coworkers better.  Night shifters also have the best personalities 😜

Working nights would obviously make accomplishing many of my life goals much harder, although I do have many coworker's who work straight nights and have families.

So right now I'm planning.

Yes, from the outside that sounds kind of weird, especially in 2020.  But I know that much of the reason that many people feel that they can't stay home even if they want to is because of finances.  So I'm kicking my debt in the butt and cleaning it up hopefully before the end of 2020!  I want to lay the plans for a sound financial future while I'm young so that my dreams will actually be attainable and I won't be putting a burden on my future family.

So wish me luck and check back for updates!

With Gazelle-like Intensity

(Just a quick FYI, this post has been sitting in my drafts for at least 9 months so I am much further along in this journey now than when this post was initially started, but I still want to share this so that we can start at the beginning). 

So private college is expensive.

I obviously knew that going in, but the reality has really started to set in.

My debt totals over $65,000.  Which to some (like myself) is a jaw-dropping amount, while for others it seems fairly average.

Your probably wondering why I chose to go to this particular school if I knew it was going to cost so much.  Well honestly, had I known what I know now about the bondage of debt I never would have chosen to attend a school that would saddle me with debt equal to over an entire year's income for my job field.  However, I will never regret choosing to go to this particular school because of how much I learned and because of how much I grew as a person during my time there. 

So now it's time to clean up the mess.

And I'm choosing to dive in head first!

My loans are technically all 10 year loans, but I have decided that's far too long to have them hanging over my head and I have set the goal to pay them off in 4 years or less!

The plan I have chosen to follow is based on principles taught by Dave Ramsey.  I grew up hearing his name mentioned by my parent's friends, but I never really paid attention because I was like 14... and had like $30 to my name... and no debt.

But here we are, 8 years and $65,000 later and I have got to do something.

I love Dave Ramsey's quote, "Live like no one else, so later you can live and give like no one else."  As a Christian, I believe I have a responsibility to be a good steward of the financial resources God has given me and I've been really convicted that debt is 100% not being a good steward.

I want to have the funds available to assist those in need, but as long as my money already has someone else's name on it, I have very little if anything to give.

So gazelle-like intensity it is.  I have been doing half-hearted attempts at budgeting to the last 5 or so months but this month I am going all in.  I was seriously shocked to see how much I was spending on eating out and groceries... it was nuts... and I live in the rural midwest!

So I have decided to slash all my spending categories to the bare minimum and actually make an attempt to squeeze the wasted dollars out and throw them towards those loans.

So far it has went alright but I did forget to budget for a weekend trip to a wedding... but hey, things happen and I tried my hardest to keep spending to a reasonable amount.

Live and learn.

So follow me on my journey to being debt free!  If any of you have similar stories, please feel free to share in the comments!

Worthy of a Crush

I was boy crazy.  Like really boy crazy, but no one really knew that since my serious crushes started around the same time that I suddenly got very shy.  It was honestly a pathetic level of boy craziness.  A different crush every couple of months, and good lord, I fell hard.  But it was silent.  I didn't ever want them to know because I didn't feel like any guy could like me romantically.  I felt like they would be weird-ed out that I was crushing on them and that they would tell everyone that I was creepy.  I was never in the popular crowd at school, but my crushes were usually from that section.  I felt like no guy could ever reciprocate those feelings.

And I still feel that way.

But I'm working on it.

I am 19 years old and a sophomore in college and have never had a guy ask me on a date or even show the slightest bit of romantic interest in me... as far as I know.  The closest I have ever come to getting asked out is getting asked to dance country swing.  Recently, I have been kind of looking back over my past high school years and time in college and the lack of dating and I have noticed a few things which I would like to bring to mention and just kind of examine.

1) First, I have had to realize that  feeling like no guy could ever like you is believing a lie!  I have been allowing myself to believe this lie for years.  Every time I had even the slightest amount of courage to talk to a guy I kind of liked I instantly got this gut feeling like "why do you even think he might like you?  That's so juvenile, you don't want to come off like you're weird, do you??"   That pit in my stomach still rears its ugly face to this day... and I have to remind myself that I am lovable.  I have wrestled with this for years, but usually wrote it off that I was too young and that it was just a dumb crush.  But recently I realized that at 19 (my mom was engaged by this point) there is NO reason to feel that no guy would ever like me and that the message in my head isn't a warning from God... it's a lie being used to rip apart my self esteem piece by piece.    

2) Second, I tend to be very emotionally reserved so I have the terrible 21st century habit of googling answers to life's questions.  I highly DO NOT recommend this, but yesterday I was googling the age old question, "how do you know if a guy likes you?" Yes, I did that... ugh.  I can't believe I just admitted that...  But, I somewhere along the line ended up on a Christian website that had an article talking about women  in college or beyond who have never been asked out on a date.  On a slight tangent, lately I have noticed that my age cohort at my church is the only one that seems to have a serious handicap when dealing with the opposite sex.  The age group a few years above and a few years below are all best buds and hangout together ALL the time.  We had and some, including myself, still have a significantly hard time even talking to some one of the other gender, much less getting a date.  Ok, back on topic.  So the article I was reading talked about how popular Christian culture has encouraged young women to "guard their hearts," and included thoughts on gender roles in dating.  I'll get back to the reason for the parenthesis in a minute.  I also noticed that the "dating talks" were really popular during my cohort's adolescence... and to be 100% honest I think they had great intentions, but ended doing some harm to those who stuck to them closely.  The article essentially suggested that we have maybe tried to push gender roles a little too much in the Christian dating scene.  Please do not get me wrong, this is coming from a hardcore gender role enthusiast.  I believe they have their purpose, but I feel as those we have made it seem as though girls are supposed to wait by silently and never show any interest in a specific guy.  While I am all for guys leading, I can also imagine just how hard getting no reaction from a girl is for a guy.  He is putting a lot on the line asking for a date without ever knowing what the girl thinks.  While we are on this topic, I also want to mention that we have expanded the term "flirting" to include everything under the sun!  I actually felt for awhile that talking to a guy I liked when I didn't really have a reason to other than that I simply wanted to was considered "flirting."  And every Christian teen is taught that flirting is BAD!  Talking to a person of the opposite gender who you might like is not flirting, well, unless it is... but then that's in the category of real flirting.  Talking to a person of the opposite gender is healthy and forms good relationships which may then form romantic relationships down the road.  But I feel that because my cohort got the extreme no dating and purity talks forced on us, I feel like some of us don't know how to have healthy relationships now that we are at an acceptable dating age.
  

Now for the explanation for the parenthesis.  The phrase "guard your heart" has been used countless times in relation to dating and relationships.  I did a quick search for the phrase in a couple different versions of the Bible and I found that the NIV only has one instance of the phrase which is found in Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."  The thing I want to point out here is that this phrase seems to have more to do with the things you partake in and allow to enter your heart which then will subsequently "flow from it."  I feel like while this does somewhat touch on relationships (obviously you should guard your heart from bad relationships) but I feel like this verse has been taken so out of context and it has been used so adamantly during dating talks to discourage dating and relationships with the opposite gender when that was not its true intention.            

3) Lastly, I am actually fairly thankful that I was quiet in high school, for the very fact that I kept my crushes to myself.  I probably, or rather God probably protected me from a lot of heartache that I otherwise would have experienced given my true, but hidden personality.  I don't necessarily regret my high school years, but I want to move forward with a new perspective.

Thanks for reading!  Leave a comment below! :) 

     

Perfect Little Quirks

My freshman year of college was a somewhat of a reality check.

But in a good way.

I had grown up with these on-screen depictions of college as being very similar to high school.  All the cliques, mandatory fashion choices, and of course the drama associated with those.  I didn't really expect college to be much different, especially being I was going to a college the size of a mid-to-large high school (at least when compared to my graduating class of 53).

But what I found was very different.

Even though I found the whole college itself to have a diverse range of backgrounds and the subsequent different lifestyles, I could not have asked for a better wing.

(Disclaimer: I feel the need to quickly explain my focal point.  I grew up in the northern mid-west on a farm 25 miles from the nearest thing what most people would call a city.  I was surrounded by little, mid-west farm towns.  What most people would consider northern hick-towns if they met the high school students...  We were all the same.  There was no diversity in any sense of the word.  So my experience was probably a tad more extreme than most peoples.)

Anyway,  I was placed on a wing that was made up of girls who had previously lived in a much smaller dorm that was turned into a guys dorm.  In that dorm they had established an incredible culture of acceptance.  So much so that I didn't even believe it at first.  My thoughts were, "Sure, they accept everybody's quirks.  Probably about as much as Hollywood does."

So I was skeptic.  For awhile... I mean, there's no way you can actually get an entire wing of girls to be cool with everyone being, well, cool.

But I was dead wrong.

I soon saw some of the quirks :) But never heard the talk behind peoples backs, some (actually most) even joined right in.

It was such a relief to realize that these girls were genuine.  And its so awesome to see the real person behind the facade so many put up and to feel entirely free to be your weird self.

Because we're all weird, some of us just allow ourselves to have more fun in life than others do. :)

Thank you girls of 3rd East, for being your awesome, amazingly cool selves :)

Re-learning How to Learn

I have written briefly on this topic in a previous post which I will post a link to  at the bottom, but I want to write further about one of my biggest struggles this past year.  In fact, it was hands down my biggest.

Last summer as I packed to go to college I secretly thought that my biggest problems would be social ones.  As you have previously read, I'm shy.  An extrovert (which I didn't realize at the time), but I'm shy.  But I rarely allowed myself to think about those types of problems.  My defense mechanism is to entirely ignore and forget about future problems (especially social ones) until the situation is right in my face.  My life mantra has really become I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.  Which has seemingly helped but is entirely off topic for this post.  What actually became my biggest problem was having no idea how to study.

I don't have first hand experience with any other high school but mine, But I have heard time and time again that this is many student biggest struggles when they reach college.

I was a B/B- student in high school and studying was essentially non-existent in my life.  Not even my friends who had straight A's all through high school studied more than the night before a test.  It was incredibly easy to slide by.  Which I now will never forgive myself for doing, because my college offers basically guaranteed scholarships based on your GPA and ACT score.  If I had actually bothered to learn the material in high school I could have achieved close to a 4.0 and had a better ACT score which would saved me a lot of the debt grief I will now be going through... I basically threw away thousands upon thousands of dollars...

But again, slightly off topic.

Opening a textbook and sitting down to study was entirely new for me.  Recording lectures and actually reading a textbook was new for me.  Spending my free time in the library only began spring of my senior year when I got my preliminary "acceptance" letter from my first choice school saying that I was accepted for enrollment but only into the 5-year nursing track not the 4-year track, but that a .18 bump in my GPA would get me in.  I had less than two months to do that.  I sat in the library alone every morning and during every lunch and I sometime even went to the public library after the school library closed to continue studying or working on a paper.

I did it.  I sent in my final high school transcripts and the acceptance letter came.

But other than that studying was a foreign concept.  Once I got to college, I had to do a trial and error approach that lasted for far too long before I finally figured out what I had to do to pass.  Thankfully that was before I outright failed anything.

I eventually realized that I am a kinesthetic/tactile and visual learner.  I actually have to watch and follow what the professor is doing while he is saying it, just listening does nothing for me.  I also discovered that the dreaded, horrible, make-your-life-miserable "mind-maps" that my physiology prof was so fond of actually made things light-years easier when I finally caught on.

The best tip I have if you are both a tactile and visual learner is when learning vocabulary or a concept is to use the acronym system (or lists) or visualize something really funny that sounds close to the word or helps you to remember another section of material.  I especially like the acronyms for anatomy and physiology because they allow you to remember large amounts of information in a certain order and its much less likely that you will make a simple mistake such as listing something in the wrong place or out of order.  And as a quick side note: please, please, PLEASE, for your own good... do not ever stick with a way of studying that is not working just because you are too lazy/stubborn to find/learn a new way.  Yes, that was another of my mistakes...

Find out what kind of learner you are and make the needed adjustments, you will thank yourself later.  I would even go as far as to say that no two people will have the same optimal study strategy.  My roommate and myself: polar opposite study habits.  I study flashcards, do the readings, watch YouTube videos, and review day in day out.  She browses the chapter and her notes two hours before a big test; we get the same grade...

Find your optimal study strategy and run with it!

This past year was crazy.  But in the end, the long hours paid off.  I wish all my fellow nursing/future nursing students good luck and I hope you are able to learn from my mistakes and excel in your studies.

Leave a comment below and let me know what your favorite method of hitting the books is!

Here is the link to my previous post where I touched on my study struggles: Sorting Through It All
   

I Am Not An Introvert

For at least a solid decade of my life I believed the lie that I was an introvert.  I let it define who I was and it held me back.

Now, let me clarify that being an introvert is not bad and it doesn't hold everyone back. Introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts are what make the world go round.  They each prefer to fill different necessary spots in this world that a person with another personality type would rather die if they had to do.  It's how we're made.

But, I tried to shove myself into a box I didn't belong in like a baby first trying to play with a shape sorter, I wasn't gonna fit.  I had labeled myself an introvert (and later an ambivert) and had adamantly argued that I was NOT shy.  I thought I was comfortable.


Well, I realize now that my first tip-off that I was certainly not an introvert was the fact that up until around 9th grade I had loved school... because I could hangout with friends, and I was ALWAYS friends with the new kids.  But at some point in early middle school I began to feel self-conscious just like every other preteen.  So naturally I got a little more shy, but then came the innocent sounding label: Quiet.  And I believed it.  I believed that I wasn't the spontaneous, talkative girl who loves socializing.  Which is, in part, true.  I am shy.  But I am an extrovert.  Looking back now, despite the fact that I wasn't and still am not the most talkative unless you give me copious amounts of caffeine, in that case, watch out world!  I was always the last to leave any group event or gathering because I didn't want to miss out on anything fun that may still happen.  I have always been an adrenaline junkie :) and love trying new things and thrill seeking.  Definitely not qualities of your textbook introvert.

But, thanks to the wonderful and amazing girls on my dorm wing at college this past year, I gradually began to realize that I hated to close my door and I always wanted to go to dances and get fro-yo, and *GASP*  I even knocked on people's door to invite them to come swing dancing.  (Not to mention DRAGGED others there too because I was not going to miss it :) )  I was so much happier this year, not that I was depressed before, but I realized who I was thank to the amazing friends I've made this year, and that person may be shy (and I'm working on that) but loves to meet new people after the initial 'talking to a new person' terror is gone, loves to go on 12:30 AM doughnut runs to a packed bakery, and especially loves to go country west coast swing dancing! :)  Thank you to everyone who made this past year one of the best years of my life.

Yeah I should have had this figured out long ago :)  It seems pretty obvious now.  If you had a similar experience I would love to here about it!  Leave a comment below!
    

Here's the link to part 1 of this post: Sorting Through It All

Sorting Through It All

Before I turn my focus to the coming excitement of nursing school, I've decided to look back on the past two semesters which got me to the point at which I am now.

While the transition to the whole 'living on your own' aspect of college was easy, the transition to 'here's a paper and 2-4 tests every week' was not... at all.  In short, it kicked my butt.  I understand that to many of you that doesn't seem like very much, and I consider you lucky.  My high school left me entirely unprepared for the workload of college life.  It was incredibly easy to not even have to take homework home, you could just finish it in the morning before class.  And tests, who ever heard of studying before the morning of a test??

So that was an abrupt awakening.  And anyone who knows me, which I realize is probably none of you, knows that I agonize over what to write for a paper, it has to "feel" just right.  The flow of the sentences and the ideas has to perfectly express my thoughts.  Anything less just feels wrong, and for me just one out-of-place sentence can ruin how I feel about an entire paper.  It was commonplace for me to finish a paper (which I would also read to the class) at 4am the morning it was due and get up and go to my 745 class.

I also discovered that who reads your paper makes a difference too.  During my Academic Writing class in high school, my teacher and I didn't really appreciate the same writing styles and despite myself being a decent writer in the grammar and language departments, she dismissed most of my papers as "confusing..."  I will admit, in her defense, my organization wasn't top rate.
 But... then came college, where I finally found a professor that spoke my "language" you could say.

In this class, I made the discovery that how you read a paper in your head, with all the pauses and breaths and emphasis, drastically affects your opinion of the quality of the paper.  It could sound like a seven-year-old wrote it or it could sound like a beautiful piece of art.  Perspective is huge.  In this case, I was taking a first year class that was supposed to basically covered speaking and writing, but I had the luck of getting the best possible prof. in my opinion.  Our class still covered the main points of good speaking and writing, but he took the class so much deeper and while other sections were learning how to correctly use commas and speak at the proper speed we were analyzing how speech and language are powerful mediums, discovering that every opinion has value, and learning how to be a speaker who serves their audience instead of their own agendas.  Every day, class was so interesting and filled with profound ideas that made you think so hard.  It will honestly forever be my favorite class.  

Well this got to be far longer than I expected so I'm going to break it into two parts.  I will post part II, I Am Not An Introvert, within the next two days.  Thank you so much for taking the time to read these scrambled thoughts of mine!

Hasta Luego!