Rain City Life

Clearly, I’m bad at this blog writing thing. Although, there is much to be done on our house and I have things to post about – I just haven’t and I apologize. I think I may just start writing about anything and everything. So today, that’s what I’m going to do!

A few months ago I started an entry I had called “Unfulfilled”. In it I had written about how un fulfilling my job was and how I felt I could be doing so much more with my life. For those of you who don’t know – I am currently working at a downtown Seattle hotel as an admin assistant. Most of my days are spent staring at the computer screen, not really doing much of anything. At the risk of sounding too whiney – I never posted it.

It was only about 2 months ago when I made a drastic decision to change my life. My grandmother had ended up in the hospital, and while visiting her, I was making note of the nurse and nurse’s assistant doing their jobs. Nursing was something I had always thought about doing. Something that I thought I would be good at but had never made the decision to go to school for. I have an associate’s degree in Multimedia Production which took me 2 years and $40,000 to get. Since I am still paying off those loans – I was in no mood to go back to school for something else. My time and money is so valuable. But then I thought – what am I REALLY doing with my life?

That night I went home and called my cousin who is a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant). She told me that to get my CNA it would only take about a quarter and the cost would be relatively cheap. Long story short, after a lot of thought, I decided that if everything fell into place, I would quit my full-time job and go back to school to get my CNA.

This was not an easy task. In order to even be accepted into the program, I needed to attend an informational session, apply and show proof that I had completed English 97/98. That part was pretty simple, however, I was extremely ancy since the last informational session. and only one I could attend, was scheduled 3 weeks before the quarter began. And after I was accepted I had a laundry list of things to do, including submitting a background check, making sure I was caught up on all my immunizations (which I was not) and multiple other things – all before I could even get the CODES to register for the classes. Allof this in 3 weeks – and I didn’t want to up and quit my job before I had the codes to register – what if the classes filled up??

Lord. I was not a fun person to be around. I was stressed to the max. Eventually, I did get everything submitted, registered for classes, submitted a down payment for the tuition and put in my two weeks notice. After that came a whole new set of headaches. Would I get a part time job? Where would I find health insurance? Who knew things could be so complicated?

Finally, my last day of work came. It was bittersweet. I was busy trying to get everything in order, switching names out on things that went directly to me and making sure nothing would be looked over. I went out to lunch with my wonderful coworkers and when I came back, I checked my personal email. I had a message from the Program Coordinator and in the subject line said “Nursing Assistant program summer 2014 cancellation”. I immediately lost it. I had just quit my job, it was 1pm on my LAST day of work, a week before the quarter was supposed to start, and it was cancelled?!

Luckily for me they hadn’t hired anyone for my position yet. After some calming down, my boss told me they’d see me on Monday. I will be forever grateful.

My new plan is to take the classes in the fall. Fall quarter, in my own case, was not ideal, however now I have the whole summer to save money and prepare for being an unemployed full time student. I’m anxious, excited and nervous for what September will bring, but cannot wait to start this new chapter of my life!