Well things have definitely flipped around a bit since my last post. I decided to decline the job offer and really looked at community colleges that offered what I was looking for. I refuse to pay an insane amount of money for the same knowledge and experience I'd get at someplace cheaper.
To my surprise there is a community college in Iowa that looks absolutely amazing. It has everything I want in every aspect and non-residents only pay $10 more per credit hour, which is crazily cheap compared to a lot of the colleges and universities I looked at. It even has on campus housing. There are two other community colleges that I wrote down to keep looking at. One is also in Iowa and the other is in Wyoming. They both appear to be very good, but I really fell in love with the first one. What sucks though is that I'll probably have to wait until next fall to attend due to housing most likely being full. I am definitely going to email them though to make sure and ask whatever other questions I have.
I am definitely pleased that I have decided to pursue what I love. The main issue is getting to the college and adjusting to not living at home or being near family. It will probably be a major shock, but hopefully I'll be fine. Another problem is paying for it all. The Pell Grant will be able to pay for the classes and books and things like that, but as for housing, that's almost the cost of the classes so I'll have to apply to as many scholarships as I possibly can.
I've also received two postcards since my last post. This one is from the Netherlands for Postcrossing:
And this one is from Finland for the site Sendsomething.net:
There really isn't much else that has happened. I am actually enjoying Calculus, which blows my mind since all throughout school I absolutely loathed any type of math class. However, I have to take the first test within a week, so we'll see how I'm doing then. I'm in a few postcard swaps right now, so I should have more PC's to post here soon.
Oh, I've also been playing Pokemon HeartGold and Castlevania for the N64. I am on such a Nintendo kick right now it's ridiculous. Castlevania is surprisingly really fun, but stupidly hard. "HAVE FUN WITH THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE" is pretty much what you can hear the creators saying at one point in the game. With Pokemon I get completely addicted to it and will end up putting way too many hours on it. I just do not know when to put it down, but my lack of a charge cord has already interfered with that. It feels really good to start playing games again.
Now I just need to start reading all the books I have...
Since school has started back up I have just felt terrible. I feel like I should just type things out, so I figured I might as well post it here while I'm at it.
The first week of school was pretty much fine. Besides LMC canceling my softball class and forcing me to waste time trying to figure out a new schedule. But forgetting that, you could say that it was normal. Then it was the weekend, which should be nice and relaxing. Well not really for me. I texted my mom on Friday asking about me visiting on Saturday. She usually complains when I don't visit her often, and I didn't have anything planned so I figured I'd head over there. Big mistake.
I don't really remember anything that happened on Friday, so it must have been all good there. I end up going to my moms on Saturday around 2. I couldn't even drive my Oldsmobile since the windshield was foggy and my dad didn't feel like fixing whatever had come loose that prevented the vents from working to defrost it. Ok, that's fine. I took my grandma's car instead, which was probably best for me to take since the wipers work better.
Well I get to my mom's apartment and walk in. Music is blasting from my brothers room and 3 of his friends are over and they are all (including my mom) playing Monopoly. Oh great, a day that was supposed to be a "family day" has now turned into me dealing with 13-15 year old boys.
Eventually their game ends and they all go into my brothers room to play video games. That just leaves my mom and I to catch up a bit. Oh boy, that's a bad idea to begin with. Turns out she's still being insanely stupid. I'm definitely not going to go into any detail about what was said to me (or shown to me) but I can guarantee that mothers should not discuss those things with their daughters no matter how old they are or "mature" they are.
I leave after only spending a few hours there since I really don't think I could have handled any more insanity. That day is when things started to turn sour for me. That night I had a terrible time trying to sleep and I kept having major lower back pain. Every night since then has just been me tossing and turning and unable to get a proper nights sleep. Last night I was dead tired and even took a sleeping aid just to make sure I would sleep through the night. That didn't help one bit and that night ended up the same as the rest. Each morning I just feel achy, tired, and depressed. My back hurts constantly and I keep having the worst headaches. It also seems like I'm cursed since everything that can go wrong, has.
I guess I just don't know what to do. School isn't the problem. I haven't missed a day yet and have been going to my classes and doing the work and so on. It's just the way I feel that I can't tolerate. Another problem is that everything I'm taking at the college is worthless. They have nothing I am interested in and I refuse to just take the "general" requirements classes. I want to do more than that and actually enjoy the classes I'm in.
Another thing to add to the mix is that I posted an ad on Craigslist stating that I am looking for a horse farm to work at in exchange for being able to ride horses for free. I've had the ad up for a little while now and I've received a response. A horse farm located about an hour away from me is looking for a full time/live in farm hand. Basically I could do the chores on the farm in exchange for a room, utilities, and being able to ride the horses. Now this is something that I would love to do. The problem though is that I'd have to live there, and full time would mean I most likely wouldn't be able to attend college. So on one hand I can stay here and be miserable, or check out the farm and the owners (the farm has a website that I checked out, but being Craigslist I'm obviously still wary) and if that all checks out possibly move up there and gain experience and references for what I actually want to do with my life.
Another thing that has popped up is that I might possibly be getting a job at the local Qdoba. I was informed by the employees when I went in there the other day that they were hiring, so I filled out an application. They told my to write down that they referred me and the next day I talked to the manager about the position. She wrote my name down so that she'd remember that I came in and talked to her. If they do decided to do interviews it still won't be for a few weeks. I've had the absolute worse luck with jobs, so my hopes aren't too high, but there's still a possibility.
Basically I am just at a loss as to what I should do right now. I really want to move in a positive direction and work towards my ultimate goal, but I'm not sure if that's the correct decision for this moment. I know I'd be a thousand times happier at the farm, but what about my so called "education"? Would it be worth it to put it on hold? Especially since what I want to do doesn't require a college degree? I would love to have an equine major, and Oklahoma State (I believe it is) has something I'd be highly interested in, but there is no way I could possibly attend there without taking out a loan. Is the best option to just wait, build experience, and try to go when I have some money saved?
I definitely know what I want to do, but I simply don't know if it's the correct choice. I don't want to just sit by and watch opportunities float by either. I want to take action.
God help me.
I have a lot of stuff to type about, but since I don't really want a huge mass of text for a post I'll most likely shorten things down. I'm also not going to write about everything, since I don't want some of it to be posted on the internet.
I honestly don't remember what happened during the last week of August. Trying to think about it now, nothing comes to mind or jumps out at me. Starting on September 1st through the 6th I had to dog sit for my cousins. I suppose I was house sitting as well since I basically lived there during that time. The first couple days were great actually, since I was away from my family and didn't have to deal with anyone. It was like a mini-vacation even though I was only three minutes from home. After those days though I felt really sick and stayed at home for the night. My grandma stayed at the house for the next day after and then I spent the last day or two by myself again.
Taking care of the animals was fine; there was only two Golden Reteiver's and a bunny. The dogs were kind of fun to play with outside. Jersey (The younger dog) is obsessed with tennis balls and fetches quite well. The second to last day I was there I actually brought my dog, a Chihuahua named Tiny, over since they have a fenced in backyard. At first the other two were very curious about him, but then Abby (the older of the two) lost interest and went on to do her thing. For most of the time Tiny would just follow me around, but he eventually got enough courage to explore the yard on his own.
Here are two pictures of Abby and Jersey playing:
And here's two pictures of my dog, Tiny:
If the quality seems a little off on them, it's because I took them with my new phone. Oh, yeah, I got a new phone on my cousins birthday. That was the 25th of August. I can't believe I forgot about his birthday. He turned 18 and to celebrate we went to this local restaurant called Gershwin's, I think it is, and he tried to take on the their challenge of eating almost a four pound burger in an hour. He was doing very good at first and was half way done before 30 minutes was up. He really slowed down though and when the time was up he had about 1/4 of the burger left. I really can't believe how huge it was. I wish I had some pictures of it.
That night though I got my new phone. It has a qwerty keyboard and takes pictures, video, and you can put a memory card in it to have MP3's as well. It's a really cool and nice phone, but I was having a lot of issues with it, so I had to take it back and exchange it. Calling the company to keep my phone number was a huge ass hassle though. I was on the phone for an hour and of course I got someone who was from India. No offense to anyone, but I could not understand anything he said since he had a thick accent and talked way too quiet. Half the time I was on hold though since he was relaying information back to another "department". I don't understand why he didn't just transfer me to them so I could talk to them myself, but at least it's done with.
College started back up on September 7th, which was a Tuesday. The classes I were going to take was originally Sculpture 1, Intro to Softball, and Calculus 1. From 12:40 P.M. - 4:00 P.M. I have sculpture on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that was the first class I attended. That was fine and only lasted about an hour and a half since we just went over the syllabus. From 5 P.M. - 6 P.M. is supposed to be Softball on Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs. I go to the room where we are supposed to meet at and no one is there. Class is supposed to have started and still, no one is there. I go to the front desk and the lady there says that this happens every year. She calls up the teacher and she's in her office. Somehow she knew who was asking about the class and told me to go meet her in her office. I go down there and she informs me that the class has been cancelled since only six people signed up for it. For some reason they didn't even have the courtesy to email me to tell me that it was cancelled. Each student has a college email address that is available to every teacher, so there was no excuse to not use that. This, of course, screws up my whole schedule since I only wanted to be a 3/4 time student and with that class now gone I was considered a 1/2 time student.
When I got home I looked through all the one credit courses offered and they were all full since school had already started. I eventually checked out a class called "Total Fitness" which is basically an open gym type thing. I ended up adding that and am now a 3/4 time student again. I actually added a movie class that is only once a week, which would bump me up to a full time student. But since the class is three hours and on a day I have sculpture class, it would greatly interfere with my homework for Calculus. I ended up dropping it the next day.
It's now the weekend and the first week of classes was pretty alright. Calculus goes by a lot faster than what I expected and sculpture is way too long for my tastes. I have yet to do the Pre-assesment for the fitness class since I have papers to fill out beforehand, but I'm scheduled to attend that on Monday. I just hope that my exercise routine fits in well with everything else I'm doing. So far everything is looking good, and I really hope that it continues in that direction.
I've received a few things from Postcrossing and Swap-bot as well. Here are the new postcards from Postcrossing:
This one's from a nurse in Germany.
From an older man in California.
This is my favorite card so far. Those are Dugongs and they are so adorable and derp.
And here's what I've gotten from Swap-bot. They're all PC's as well:
A German lake.
I'm definitely going to try to update more frequently, even with school and whatnot. I just don't want to get behind on updating and then have to write an insane amount like this. I'm pretty sure I included everything I wanted, but who knows...I am quite the forgetful person.
