I've been doing some thinking the past few weeks and it has peaked a few moments ago. Hours, actually.

Do you know why I'm 25 years old and I don't have my degree yet? Because I'm afraid to go to school full-time. To devote myself 100% to my studies. Working for a living is all I have known. It's all my family has known and there is this little girl inside of me that is afraid to try something new. It's the same little girl that kept me from enlisting in college directly out of highschool.

I'm so very, very tired of listening to that girl whine.

I want and I will do something more with my life than look for two-bit jobs on the weekends so that I can get out of one shithole office and plunk myself down into another one. I have watched five years of my life go by from the restricted cubicle view of my cheaply fabricated desk. I wake up in the morning to go to a job that is meaningless and does not one bit of good in the world except line some CEOs pockets.

I don't want money. I don't want to be rich. I want a job, a career. I want to wake up in the morning and know that I applied myself and that I will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I want to make a difference.

I'm not the smartest person out there by far, but I know I'm too smart to continue doing this any longer. Monday I am going to financial aid and I'm going to finalize my application for a student loan. If it's enough, I'm going to quit working and go to school fulltime. I don't care how long it takes, but I will get my masters degree and I will most assuredly get my doctorate before I die. And I will not continue doing this class here, class there when I can afford it routine any longer.

Yes, I may saddle myself with a student loan, but at least when I wake up in the morning one day when my classes are finished I will know that I am going to a job that will make a difference not only in my life, but someone else's as well. And even if my entire paycheck goes into my student loans at least I will have the knowledge and comfort that is gained from that knowledge that I applied myself and that I didn't sit around any longer saying "Oh, if only I had been born into a richer family", "Oh, if only this..." and "If only that...".

Do I not have a brain? Do I not have two arms and legs? I can carry my own self to school, thank you very much, Bug (yes, I'm talking to myself - lol). Yes, I will fear the lack of a severely larger income if I do this (or even if I drop to part time work), but at least I'll be working toward something. And, most importantly, at least I'll be doing something I want - just on a tighter budget.

I've learned several lessons this week.

1.) Just because you have new high heels that make nifty "clickety clackety" noises it does not necessarily mean that your entire office wants to hear you goose step about the linoleum.

2.) In addition to said heels, your coworkers also do not want to see you tap dancing away in the bathroom on the hard tile while going "bum ba dum!"

3.) Even though you study for a testing out exam to avoid taking a class, the day the test arrives you will forget everything you know and spend the remaining five hours until the exam scrambling to study more and frantically contemplating leaping off your balcony (four hours to go...oh god....EEEEeeeee).

4.) Just when you think you can declare yourself certifiably sane...something will always come along to prove you wrong.

5.) If you mail out your bills and try to make it a festive occassion ("Yippee! I've paid my bills! Yippee! I'm broke!") it doesn't make the pain go away. Instead people look at you very strangely at the mailbox.

6.) Blogging does not help one study when four hours are remaining to take a giant terrifying exam of which you cannot recall if you are prepared for any longer or not. The terms 'prokaryotes', 'xylem' and 'homeostatic mechanisms' are now becoming interchangeable and the balcony looks more promising by the second.

7.) ....EEEK!



UPDATE:

I did it! I passed my first clep exam. I have successfully tested out of (not one!) two biology courses with one fell swoop and only a few weeks of independent study. I just got 6 credit hours on my transcript for a one hour test.



HUZZAH!

My spies (okay, I admit it - I just read my comments) have informed me that a certain Mr. Fisk will be visiting my little city this summer. O woe unto Raleigh. I shall have to convince the illustrious Fisk to join me on a night on the town. Drinks shall be consumed and wackiness with world domination shall surely ensue.

Though one must ask the question - in this particular scenario who shall be Pinky and who shall be Brain?

They restructured the work areas at our office. A lot of people were rearranged. This was all, of course, within our own interest - to "promote greater diversity and understanding of other regions" within our departments.



I think they are trying to kill me...

In painfully sadistic means...

Placed beside me are now the two most gossipy women I have yet to encounter in my entire life. I dare not exaggerate this time. This is literal truth. Help me.

Not only are these creatures wanton gossips, but malicious ones to boot. I would rather be rubbed raw with steel balls and then dumped unceremoniously into a vat of salt than be placed under the ministrations of their verbal scalpels.

So horrific are they that I suspect even the various bits of bacterium that float about the office refuse to near their desks.

Welcome to my brain. At work I had a thought...

Considering that reality is relative it is entirely possible that everyone is a figment of everyone elses imagination.

Clarification: The view that I have of reality is unique in regards to anyone else in the world. The same applies to every person on this planet.

Reality = perspective.

Each person has their own individual and unique perspective of reality and the people that are in it. My perspective of you will not match anyone else's perspective 100% - not even your own. Therefore my viewpoint of you is partially due to a figment in my imagination as I cannot possibly know everything that comprises "you".

As I do not know everything that comprises "you" I must make assumptions and deductions that lead to forming my opinion and viewpoint of "you". Some of these assumptions and deductions will be wrong (some partially, some completely, others correct except for a small infintismal portion).

The assumptions and deductions that are wrong are therefore figments of my imagination (imagination being used to fill in those gaps of things I do not know about you based upon what I have seen or conclude).

Therefore, as one knows that every person on this planet must do this, it can safely be concluded that every one is (in some way) a figment of another person's imagination.

Yes, I am a dork.