Oh good grief, it's been over a month. I do apologize for the lack of updates.
So, first and foremost, LPN school. It's going well so far; it's only been three weeks but I've already had about ten tests in both my classes, and thankfully I'm passing them with A's, but that's liable to change anytime, so I do spend a lot of time studying. I was (and am still) excited about our uniforms-- we get to wear scrubs and be all official and stuff!!! Thankfully they're very comfortable, and it's easy to transition from school to work, since I pretty much wear the same thing at both locations. My classmates are pretty fun; most of them are either retired military, as we're about an hour outside of Quantico, or moms looking for a career. So far the group I more or less "hang" with consists of Jay, a Korean mother who is always happy about everything; Steph, the mother of a special-needs child and my main study-buddy; and Mike and Courtney, who only come twice a week for Anatomy to fulfill their pre-requisites for an RN program. Mike is very smart and outgoing, and Courtney is pretty shy but sweet. So far we're taking Trends in Nursing, which is basically a common sense class for nurses, and Anatomy and Physiology. The Trends professor is a former hippie from the 60's, but she is really fun and works at Snowden Mental Health clinic. The Anatomy professor is nice, but her class gets annoying when she starts reading verbatim from the text during lecture. We all can read the text, we need a lecture based on the text without it just being the text. If the class only required us to know the info from the book, we wouldn't need this lecture. Ah well, that's just me being nitpicky. Still having fun, and looking forward to clinicals next semester. The one downside is that I get up at 5:30 every morning to get ready for class. When I hit the road at 6:30, the traffic on the 95 is just starting to back up, so I know I'm leaving at a good time, even if I do get there about an hour early.
Work is going well. I work at Doc's dental office a few hours each day, cleaning, setting up trays, seating patients, that sort of thing. In October there's a a class for dental x-rays that I'm taking and he's paying for, so I can use the x-ray machine and take pictures of people's teeth, so that's pretty exciting. The patients are all really nice, and some of them bring their young kids in and I have to babysit them, which is always fun. There was this one girl, she couldn't have been more than 4, and we played with the stuffed animals and the toy cars in the office and just had a blast. She was so cute. And just this week, a new mom brought her 9-week-old son to the office. He was smiling at all of us and just being absolutely adorable. It's little moments like that that make the job awesome.
Been slowly learning to budget; right now I'm living off of $20 a week, and only spend about $100 a month in gas. Between tuition and rent and insurance, I'm still very well off financially. I feel really blessed. The only downside to where I live is that there's no internet, so special thanks to Starbucks and Panera for having free wi-fi as well as good edibles.
The one thing I feel bad about this whole move is the fact that it was so fast. I more or less hastily shoved all of my things into my car and drove off without hesitation and without saying goodbye to a lot of people. I do miss people back in California, but I don't regret leaving one bit. I'm also looking forward to fly back for Christmas, which should be fun.
It feels wonderful being here and having a purpose in life again.
Warm Regards,
Liz
