It was exactly four years ago this month that I made my final decision to quit working in the restaurant and go back to school. For some inane (hindsight being 20/20 and all) reason I had always kinda toyed with the idea of staying in the restaurant business. Looking back I can't even see how people put up with me back then, I was a very different person and not very nice to some of the closest people in my life. Either way, reason intervened and I made a concrete decision to quit and FINALLY go back to school. Though I had only been out for three years, going back seemed like a scary scary thought. And, no possible way was I going to still pursue a veterinary career. After all I'd tried that and those classes were waaaaay too hard, I failed them and I just wasn't capable of that kind of work.
So I went back, taking courses at a community college that I could hardly afford (in fact I'm pretty sure I still owe my grandparents for a semester) majoring in Mass Communications. What I was going to do with that degree I will never know, it only lasted about a semester. I got really bored with the coursework, though I have always been very grateful to be back in school. I started thinking about maybe giving those impossible pre-vet classes one more go. I really really struggled with this decision, and looking back I'm not sure why. Either way I changed my major and my school. I started my coursework at Texas Tech. This was, to date, my lifelong dream. I HATED my previous institution and I think I hated it so much simply because I wanted to be at Tech so badly. It is where I had always envisioned myself. I saw myself at football games, getting chummy with Coach Knight, walking across the stage to get my red and black diploma. That degree, and that dream were in reach for the first time in five years. I had lived in Lubbock, at that time, for 3 years with all the intentions of actually going to school, and bills/residency/jobs/boys/life kept getting in my way. Now that I had actually put my foot down and I was responsible for realizing my own dream. It was a really powerful feeling.
Then, almost exactly a year after I had quit my job, and only halfway into my first semester at Tech I got a phone call. I had met a guy on my last opening for the restaurant, and while I thought he was perfectly nice, I hadn't really given him a second thought...until he called a year later. I think we talked well into the 3-4 am range...I was supposed to be writing a paper. He called again the next day, and the next and 7 days later he drove from Tyler to Lubbock to surprise me...and it was over. I was hooked, addicted madly deeply truly curl your toes kinda love. That was October, we were engaged in April and married in June.
Marrying him though, meant I had to give up on what I thought was my dream--that degree from Texas Tech. I do remember fretting over it some, grieving that loss. But, ultimately realizing that my dream was to get in, go to, and finish vet school--which was a dream my husband shared with me. In the end, I don't think it was the actual campus or tradition or anything else about Tech that drew me there, it was the assertion of my independence to go-to finally make the decision and follow my dream. A dream I wasn't being asked to give up--just a school.
So, as I sit here now--remembering that string of decisions over for years that have led me to this place, I not only feel nostalgic, but unimaginably blessed.
I moved from Lubbock willingly (mind you not because I really like Tyler, or Houston) because we wanted something bigger for both of us, for our lives together. It really amazes me sometimes how blessed I am that I have a husband who is letting me do this. He is financing, my entire education (ok Uncle Sam helps too) he works 60+ hour weeks, pays the bills (like he actually writes the checks, not just puts money in the bank) he helps clean the house, he does the dishes, he cooks dinner on nights I have to study. And he really asks nothing of me in return. I think the thing I love the most is that he doesn't just finance me, and put up with all my gross stories he doesn't want to hear, and the smell of anatomy lab, and complaining about lack of sleep....he actually shares this dream with me. He shares my joys, my struggles, and my failures with me, and I will consider this degree to be as much his as it is mine.
I guess it just hit me today how very very different this little life of mine would be if I hadn't gone back to school, if I hadn't changed my major and most of all if he hadn't picked up the phone that day. I would be in a tiny apartment, studying constantly with no relief. I would be even broker than we are now. I would be cooking for one. But mostly, I would be alone, with no one to share this with. As hard as it is trying to maintain a good marriage and go to school at the same time--I absolutely can't imagine it any other way. Giving up my little dream of Tech to focus on the bigger one of vet school turned out to not actually be that big of a deal...the big prize is still the same. Or, maybe it's better, because I get to share it with him.
So, in the end when I started this journey almost exactly four years ago, I really never thought I would be here...but I am exactly where I want to be.
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