Thursday, January 26, 2012

Grad School?

My senior year of college lots of my friends started studying for the GRE. I thought about it for all of two seconds and decided grad school was not for me. Once I graduated with my Bachelor's Degree I was going to be done with school. How could people go to school for so many years and not get so sick of it? Well, graduation came and went and Brad Thomsa and I were thrown into the real world. No more on-campus jobs, no more $600 rent including utilities, no more late night cramming sessions, no more Utah, and no more school. I'm not going to lie, I went through a bit of an identity crisis. I had been in school for the past 17 years of my life. A huge part of my identity was STUDENT. What now? I didn't have a job, we didn't have any friends in Georgia, and I wasn't in school. I felt like my only title was WIFE. After so many years of multi-tasking how could I handle only one role? I couldn't. So we got a dog. :) But seriously, I quickly learned that I hadn't made the smartest decision when choosing my college degree. Human development is, let's face it, an unemployable degree. I did eventually find a job working way more hours than I was actually paid for and after being miserable with it for a year I realized how smart and prepared all my friends were in college who took the GRE. Why didn't I just it? Even if I wasn't planning on going to grad school, the scores last 5 years so I would've had time to change my mind. But we live and we learn, right? 

I eventually decided that I did want to go to grad school, and I started taking the pre-reqs I needed. Skip forward a year to December 2011. I had been volunteering/shadowing an occupational therapist for four months. I was dreading taking the GRE and had given up hope on applying for this year. That OT sat me down and told me to just do it. Just take the stupid test and apply to school. There's no point in wasting another year. She was right, and after about two days of crying because I was so stressed out I buckled down and took the GRE one week later. I turned in my grad school application one week before the January 15 deadline and emailed the admissions secretary almost every other day with made up questions just so she would know how incredibly interested in the program I was.

I feel like it's taken me a lot longer than many of my other peers to find out what I want to be when I grow up, but I finally did and the wait to begin learning how to do so is killing me. Luckily the same school that Brad will be going to for dental school has an occupational therapy program as well. I received an email from them Tuesday saying that they had reviewed my application and would like to invite me to an interview. An interview! One step closer! It's next Friday, February 3rd. If they like me and think I'll do well in their program they'll accept me and a huge part of my missing identity will be restored. I'll once again be a student, and I'll finally be studying material that will be useful to me in the real world. (If you don't know what occupational therapy is click HERE.)

Anyways, I want to start getting better writing on this blog meaningful posts that actually document
Brad and my life together and not just tons of pictures all the time, so what better way to start than this. Keep me in your prayers!

Courtney

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