Back to school...

I've decided to go back to school, finishing what I started long ago. I have an official copy of my University of Washington transcripts (70 credits in two years) and will be meeting with a South Seattle Community College advisor tomorrow afternoon. I hope that the classes I took long ago still count… I’m hoping to take only two night classes per quarter (ten credits) while I’m working full-time.

On Monday, I was thinking about how I always tell people that they can do whatever it is they want with their careers, relationships, etc. They just have to go for their dreams by taking action and following the appropriate steps to accomplish their goal. This is the kind of stuff I was telling my brother (35 years old) and sister (22 years old) just the day before. We were talking about our current jobs and we suddenly realized that none of us had finished college - yet each of us had two-years of college experience. I was telling them how they needed to go back and finish school. But here I was, not finish with school myself. I've been at the same job for almost ten years (hired November 1995). I’ve been content with doing almost the same thing all this time. That’s a long time and it just hit me that it’s time for a change. And for the kind of change that I want, I have to go back to school.

Growing up, my parents did a great job stressing the importance of education. That’s why my siblings and I are equals as far as intelligence goes. But my parents were really only there for us through high school. After that, they didn’t seem to know how to further encourage us through college. They couldn’t help us with money ‘cause they didn’t have any extra to give. And they couldn’t control our study habits ‘cause we were officially adults. I don’t know about my brother & sister but, once I was off on my own, furthering my education was the last thing on my mind. After all those years of having to follow my parents’ rules, always staying home and never ever going out, I became the biggest slacker at UW. I wasn’t really much of a partier but I did like to just hang with friends, play sports, go out to eat, watch movies…basically all those things that we missed out on growing up.

So here I am now, over ten years later, not regretting a single thing. I’ve learned so much from my experiences and I’m glad I better know what I’m doing now. I’ll continue to make mistakes but the fewer of them I can make, the better off I will be. I know my family can (and will) be really successful in whatever they choose to do as well. But they have to take steps to get where they want to get. It’s not going to magically happen. MY first steps are meeting with an advisor, showing them my pathetic transcripts, and signing up for classes which start on September 26th. It’s going to be a long journey but it’ll be worth it once all is said and done.