Bossnass

My recent education and my current lost direction...

I wasn't really concerned about acedemics in high school; post-secondary education wasn't something I was interested and it wasn't a financial possibility either. Besides, I was pursuing athletics and having a good time.

Well, the being an olympic caliber skier didn't pan out after a blown knee and a loss of heart. I had worked part time in various trades while I trained, so I took a coaching job and went to work in a glass shop. Unfortunately, being unedumacated as I am, I soon realized that my potential for upward mobility was somewhat limited. When I broke my thumb (Darwinian job training, but more the fault of a co-worker then mine), I decided that I should go to school.

So fall of 2002 I enroll at a local college in a business transfer program. Still working, but a full course load. I was surprised at how easy I found things. Then again, english 101, introductory economics and statistics are not the most difficult courses in the world. Nonetheless, I felt like I was wasting my time and money with those 'mickey mouse' courses. My potential future as a cubicle drone never had that much appeal anyway.

So winter semester 2003 I transfer into the Science program at the local University. Thinking Computer Science. I did some general science, did my easy calculus, some java, and some c++. Not bad, but in the big picutre I couldn't see coding for a living.

Alright, so fall 2003, I enter the first year Engineering program at the university. My marks from the college and from my previous semester were good enough to get me in. With the mortgage payment, the small business loan, etc, I didn't qualify for student loans and they wouldn't have been suffcient anyway. Which meant working full time to maintain current cost of living, a bit of overtime to pay the balance of tuition, and six classess of engineering courses. My marks were marginal after the first semester but I was pretty sure I could pull them up over the winter semester.

Well most my marks have come back and I didn't. During the first week of eng classes, we had the cliche speech "Look around you, at your classmates... they won't all be here this time next year." Yeah, sure, I thought at the time. Turns out they were right. Failure was an option that I never really acknowledged until it was a reality.

I suppose in retrospect, I could have tried to better manage my finances to take the pressure off, but short of selling my home and renting somewhere, I don't know what I should have done. And at the heart of it, I don't know if it made that big of a difference, because I was able to get in a few hours of homework when I was at work.

So here I am, employed with jobs I hate, with two years of higher education that mean nothing. I don't know how to tell my fiance, who so happens to be in Med school. Or my parents who are chock full of pride at how I'm making a life for myself, or anyone on either side of our extended families.

I've spent the last couple days in a lost drunken stupor. I'm just wondering what I should do when I wake up tomorrow morning or with my entire future.