Monday, January 14, 2013

Ramblings on college

First day at community college today!  I'm enrolled in Nutrition and Spanish.  Nutrition is one of the prerequisites for all the nursing programs I'm interested in, and Spanish is for fun.  Well, I suppose it's actually more important than that, because learning Spanish has been one of my back-burner personal goals since I moved to LA for college 15 years ago, so it's nice to finally take it from queued up to cued up!

Speaking of that glorious age gap between college age and my age...  I sat down in Spanish class and the woman next to me turned to me and said, "How old are you?"  Now, this question isn't something people generally ask, certainly not right off the bat, so I made a split second decision to give her the benefit of the doubt and answered, "Thirty-three."  She said, "Oh wow, I thought you were in your twenties.  I'm eighteen, and I think I'm the youngest one in here."  I said, "Nah, I'm sure there are lots of people right out of high school here," (although the truth is, anyone under 25 looks like 18 to me anymore) and thought, yep, I was right to give her the benefit of the doubt.  It's still not the most polite question, perhaps, but she was feeling intimidated, and apparently didn't think I was old enough to have reached the point where it was inappropriate to ask, so I'll cut her some slack.  I had actually just been walking around the campus noting how young everyone looked (and the fact that I'm almost twice as old as many of them), so I related to her feeling of being on the sides of the age spectrum.

It was also the second time in the past week that my age has come up with someone I didn't really know. The other time was when a mother of young children asked me if Donovan was my only child, and I replied that I have nine and seven year old girls.  She said, "Oh, you look too young to have a nine year old!"  To which I replied a thank you and that I was young when she was born.  I can't remember whether she asked my age or not.

Right, my classes...
Both professors are energetic and engaging, thank heavens.  The Spanish professor is going to do a full immersion course, which absolutely thrills me.  I know that's what I need.  She did half the class time in Spanish today, and won't speak in English again unless she absolutely has to, and I was pretty impressed by her ability to teach Spanish using only Spanish.  She says her semester class is worth about 3 years of high school Spanish, so I say bring it on.  I've been waiting a long time for this!

It's very strange to be back in school in the age of computers.  I walked in to Nutrition, and the screen had a webpage projected onto it so that the professor could show us how to log in to the course website to do our homework.  I feel like I ought to become a member of AARP when I talk about what the technology was like when I went to college, and I only graduated 12 years ago.  (I called home from orientation on a pay phone.  In my defense, it had push buttons, not a rotor.)  We had email and signed up for classes via the internet starting my second or third quarter.  But no professors used power point yet, there was no such thing as an online course, and submitting coursework via email attachment is something I did once when I was sick and the instructor took pity on me.

It's also strange to have the background I do.  Most of the people there have recently graduated high school.  Some others have spent time working after high school.  This is what we expect from college students.  So, when my Nutrition professor asked us to give a short intro and tell her why we were taking her class, and all the other students were talking about where they worked and what their major was, I'm thinking, "Hi, I'm Megan, I'm a mom and a midwife, and I don't have a major here because I already have a bachelor's from UCLA, but this is one of the prerequisites I'm taking so I can get a nursing degree to become a midwife... yes I know I'm already a midwife...  it's complicated."  So I just said, "Hi, I'm Megan, I'm undeclared and am taking prerequisites for an accelerated bachelor's in nursing," so that I wouldn't sound braggy but giving the instructor the chance to gather that it's a second degree if she knows about ABSN programs.  The strange part to me is balancing being open and honest about who I am and where I come from, without making anyone feel that I think I'm better than they are.

In truth, I think we're on completely equal footing.  I've never taken these classes before.  At UCLA, I avoided science classes like the plague.  My physical science courses were in Environmental Science.  My biological science course was Anatomy and Physiology for non-science majors, no lab component,  and I took it pass/no pass!  I was going to be an elementary school teacher, so I majored in the subject I enjoyed most.  I never would have believed you if you had told me I'd be a midwife someday.  If I'd had any inkling, you can bet I would have worked my tail off to get into UCLA's nursing school.

Hindsight.

It's going to be a grand adventure.  Even if I end up deciding to stick with being a licensed midwife working in home birth, rather than going back to school to be a nurse-midwife so that I can work in any setting, I'm excited to be exercising my brain while the kids are in school, and learning new things.  This semester in particular is exciting since these topics will be applicable to my life in general, not just to my potential career path.

I'll check in with updates.  Hopefully not all of them will be about speaking Frespañol.  ("Escucho la radio tous les jours."  Yeah.)


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