The One With My Enrollment

Just when everyone is welcoming me to adulthood, it's time for me to regress to my indecisive adolescent phase and go back to college. All I ever wanted to be is a reporter. Now that I'm not doing that, I have decided that the communications field isn't for me. But I don't have any of the classes to move into a Masters program in biology, so I'm taking undergraduate classes. I just enrolled in my first semester, and here are my fall classes: chemistry I with a lab, biology I with a lab and statistics. My undergraduate worst nightmare. But I think this time around, I should enjoy at least some of these classes a lot.

But I am starting to worry about quitting my job. The class I have to take most (chemistry) and biology are both only offered at one time, so I can only take them during the day. With the three hour lab, that gets sticky. So if I want to go back to school, I really do need to move onto the next phase of my professional life, but I'm starting to get a little worried about making ends meet... I guess it will work itself out. It always does.

The One Where I Do Something Girly

I'm not a big fan of jewelry. Everyone who knows me knows that. I don't have my ears pierced, I own probably three necklaces, and I just started wearing a watch. But on Sunday, I got a piece of jewelry that I will be wearing for the rest of my life. And once my friends recovered from the concussions they received from hitting the floor after I revealed to them that I actually was the marrying kind (the only reason anyone can accept this is because they all love Ross and know how sweet he is to put up with someone like me), they all wanted to see the ring. So here it is. Yes, I'm actually posting a photo of my ring on my blog. I'm about as embarrassed now as I was taking a picture of it. Please stop laughing.

The One Where Some of Us Are Clowns

Everyone who reads this blog should know that I love Counting Crows. However, there's been one thing that I haven't been able to bring myself to do since I graduated from college -- listen to Recovering the Satellites. It takes me back to 17 when I was in such a terrible depression that I didn't eat or sleep and had figured out exactly how I was going to kill myself. I was in the most horrible downward spiral of my life, trying to figure out things that I still haven't quite come to terms with. And every two years, those depressions pop up again for a few months to remind me that I'm not exactly over my past.

This year, during my depression, I was forced to deal with the past when my past found me in the form of my high school reunion. I didn't go, but I sent out the invitations, forcing me to reconnect with people that I have been avoiding for, well, 10 years. One of those was my high school best friend. We ended our friendship abruptly during our freshman year of college, and both of us blamed the other. Well, last week, we talked it out -- for five hours. It was very cathartic to see myself through her eyes and finally understand some of those things that happened. She reminded me things that I had completely forgotten, and I did the same for her. It helped me really deal with some things that I have struggled with.

So yesterday, when the line from "Good-Night Elisabeth" that I love so much, "We couldn't all be cowboys, so some of us are clowns. And some of us are dancers on the midway; we roam from town to town," stuck in my head out of the blue yesterday, I did the unthinkable. I put in Recovering the Satellites and took a good look at myself at 17. That whole cd is just exactly who I was at that time, and it made me sad, but at the same time, I'm not that girl anymore. And as I get ready to head back to Hutchinson for the first time in years, I have to remember and accept that girl, but I also have to realize that I'm not still her. I can handle my family. I don't have to feel guilty that I'm different. I don't have to feel bad about my success. I don't have to feel guilty that I escaped. And maybe once I stop feeling so negatively about myself because I just never fit in, I can stop being so angry at them that they've always made me feel that way.

At least I can hope.