It shouldn't be this hard.

Here’s the latest problem with my going back to school. No, problem isn’t the right word. Let’s use challenge. Anyway, my most recent challenge is that the Radiology course I want to take has a THREE YEAR WAITING LIST! That’s right, a God Damn THREE YEAR WAITING LIST! That would have been a valuable piece of information to get, oh I don’t know, like a month and a half ago, when I initially started down this road!

I have been into the Student Advising Office, on average, once a week for the past seven weeks. During that time, not a single advisor informed me about the three year waiting list. In fact, after hearing from someone who works in the field (that many Radiology programs have such a list), I asked one of the advisors about this and he told me point blank that “No” there was not a waiting list. He continued to “advise” me in how I could get my pre-requisites out of the way in time to start the Radiology program in the fall. This “advise” included that I need to get my Algebra score up to 57 from 26 so I could move into the next math class by the 22nd of this month, when school starts.

I met with the Director of Student Advising yesterday (by sheer chance), and he is the one who informed me of the waiting list. I told him of my conversations with his advisors (five out the six), and he left me in his office to speak with the advisor that completely miss-informed me. Upon his return, he told me that the advisor in question miss-understood me, and thought I was asking about a waiting list for general enrollment. I explained to him that I didn’t believe that answer, as I have explained to every advisor my current status (returning to school as an adult, un-employed, not possessing an un-exhaustible supply of money, and planning my life around starting this program in the fall). He apologized, although not to my satisfaction.

Here’s what I’m thinking about right now:
* Do I get a job for the interim? If so, any career I deem worthy for that period of time, I will most likely totally invest myself (as I typically do). If that is the case, I have serious doubts as to whether or not I would be willing to quit and go back to school in three years time.
* Do I continue with my plan to go back to school? I can take some basic classes (needed for most degrees), and find another degree to pursue. I’ve been thinking about a Political Science degree, but there’s not a guarantied job at the end of that journey, and it would be at least four years instead of two. I could investigate a different degree in health care, but that would mean starting from scratch, although I would have the next semester to research and plan.
* Do I just forget school and go back to work? This has always been a possibility, and most likely the safest path to go down. However, I’ve in a place mentally that I would return to school, and use those new skills to go in a different direction professionally. This is what I really want to do, but I don’t think I can wait three freaking years. That and the “safest” path isn’t something that interests me right now. I viewed my being laid off as a new opportunity to try something completely different, and that’s the road I want to travel. I don’t want to try a full time job while going to school in the evening, as that would take forever, and we all now I don’t have the patience for that.

I’ll keep you apprised as to how things unfold. Did I mention that tuition is due this Wednesday, January 9th? No pressure, I can take my time. And I thought Algebra was going to be the hardest thing. Shit.