it all feels mostly crazy

So I am watching a Glee Christmas for the second time, (because I woke up at 8am on my holiday break--what person with out small children wakes up at 8 on break??) and I am sure I will watch it again a couple more times before my holiday break is over. I love glee and strangely, I am not embarrassed to say so.

With waking early comes reflection: This past month has been a challenge to say the least, I am trying to form more descriptive words in my mind that would better describe what I have just survived, thinking about this past month makes a wave of nausea start at my lower back and roll up to my head.

Nursing school is way more intense than I ever imagined. I always thought during all my years as a student in the education system (public, and semi confusingly private/public) that school was just a requirement of life, you made it through classes doing as much or as little as you needed to do to gain the pride and acceptance of your parents, peers, siblings, or whomever seemed interested at the end of each grading period to ask "how did you do?" I had this grand idea in my mind that when one went to college they went to learn what they wanted to learn. I was quickly thrown under the bus to learn that to apply to a program of personal interest that there were more classes that were required, not classes one would willingly take "for fun" but classes you have to take. So I took those classes, those biology's, chemistry's, math's, and anatomy's. Oh the Maths. I am not a strong student. I will show up and I will do my homework but when it comes to actual application I can't force interest.

I did it, I finished all the required classes, I even received my first associate's degree with honors in requirement classes. It took 6 years as a part time night student. Although mostly it was not that much fun, I did it and I walked across a stage and I took credit for doing, not what I wanted but, what was required off me.

I said the last two paragraphs above to get to this point. I really thought I would excel at the Nursing Program because I worked so hard to be in the Nursing Program. There has been so much talk, planning, and preparation that led up to last semester, so much. I really thought that it would have been not as stressful, not as hair pulling, not as _____________. There is a word that belongs on that line but for the life of me I can not find it. I will, trust me I will but I just don't have it right now.

So, Merry Christmas, reflect back on all you have done to get you to today. I am sure your path has been occasionally bumpy, with holes, ruts, and some mud. But you did it, you made it to the holiday season and I am proud of you. Life is hard. I am not sure I really understood the concept of life three or even five years ago, I really think that there should be some bedtime kid type stories for us adults explaining that bears poop in the woods and that life is hard but done in cute analogy type ways with fuzzy animals on thick cardboard pages that smell of bubble gum or lavender.