The Universe Says NO!

When I signed up for spring semester classes I didn’t know that there was no financial aid available to me so I enrolled in two classes. Two pretty challenging chemistry classes but, hey, I’d only be taking those two and they fit together very nicely. I anticipated a semester that stretched my mind and expanded my knowledge but without the schedule difficulties this current one has had. I was pretty happy with how the spring semester looked with no online classes or bullshit papers to write. This was going to be Great!

…Until I realized I was going to have to actually pay for these classes. I was out of Monopoly money for the year. No more Edubucks for this girl (until September of course). Crap! I put off even looking at the e-bill for a few days. When I finally did I saw that for two classes (and registration fees and lab fees and random fees) it would be just under three thousand dollars OR just over twenty-five hundred depending on how you look at it. Glass half full and all that.

Sometimes it’s better not knowing.

Really, the cost wasn’t as bad as I though it would be. Maybe I just expected an impossible number so I was pleasantly surprised. It was kind of like reverse sticker shock.

Apparently I could apply for private loans to cover this but I happened to look at my total student loan debt total not too long ago so  more, higher interest loans really did not seem like a good idea.  I went back and forth on what to do about these classes for a couple weeks. I could just take the physical chemistry class, that wouldn’t be so bad, but then I’d have to squeeze the other class (biochemistry) in another (probably) spring semester somewhere down the road. If I cleaned out my savings and pushed some other things onto my credit card then worked as many extra days I could over the summer (I’m still part time so I was planning on looking for “extra” summer work anyhow) I might just be able to make both classes work. It’s a big risk but I really wanted to take both these classes, it would put me on track to have all the classes I need to double major in chemistry finished by the end of the first semester of nursing school. From what I hear that’s a good thing. The fact that I even want to double major while getting my BSN is probably a sign of insanity. But, hey, I never claimed to be sane.

Finally, at the end of last week, I looked at my resources, crunched some numbers and really thought about the logistics of taking both classes: I decided to do it. Yes, it would be difficult. Yes, I’d be broke all summer and have to spend every extra chance I got working…but I could make it work and, more importantly, I wanted to make it work. Sometimes you just gotta do what you want to do. Or something like that.

I felt good about the decision. Onward and Upward!

And then the transmission on my only vehicle died…

…on the side of the road shortly after I had picked the kids up from their dad’s for the week.

I pushed on the gas pedal, the RPMs went up but the car did not go. Shit! Shit! Shit!

I had just gotten it all figured out…and the Universe said “No!”

Of course I had to make the tough  obvious choice to pay to get my car fixed (to the tune of half the cost of two spring semester classes).

In my defense, I didn’t feel like this until the next morning when I woke up at 4am to a puking kid just moments before my alarm was about to go off …so I could get up to go to work… on a Saturday.

I went online and dropped the Biochem class this morning. It brought sadness to my heart but who knows, maybe this is a good thing. Maybe with only one spring class I’ll have time to run another half marathon this summer…or actually date….or take a vacation. The possibilities are endless  slightly less limited than they’d otherwise be.