#nontraditionalstudent

It's been just about a year now since I decided, in my forties, to go back to school to take science classes. It's been a truly wild experience: sometimes awful, sometimes wonderful, always stressful, but I can only hope it'll be worth it overall.

For reference, I graduated college with my BA in 2006, and finished my MA in 2009. But I'm going back… for science! So, right now in my life, I work full-time, I teach part time, I volunteer on an ambulance, and I take science classes. Lots of biology (yay!) way, way more chemistry (yay!/boo!, its both, always both) than I ever imagined I'd take in my wildest dreams. It's completely insane, and yet, it's where I am right now.

And a fun warning: I'm going to talk about grades here! I'll also touch on mental health and assorted sundries.

Let me tell you what it's like to shit yourself over grades in your 40s. In a nutshell: it's insane, and pretty terrible. Imagine all your nightmares about failing a class are real, but also, you need to do your job all day first. Also, you have BILLS and RENT and you have 1/10 the energy you did when you went to school the first time! You also -- if you are very, VERY lucky (as I am), have a partner who loves and supports you, and the specter of disappointing them and working too hard to have a social life buzzes about you at all times.

My first class, starting last January, was precalculus at a CUNY, and it was the worst academic experience of my life by far and away. The professor was pretty hostile, and every exam had an oral exam component, which was panic-inducing (you might imagine, if you have, uh, MATH TRAUMA and a raging anxiety disorder). I'm 90% sure she didn't even grade most of my work, she just gave me a C based on vibes and vibes alone (most of the tests I did get any kind of grade for were Bs and even an A or two), and when I tried to argue my performance was perhaps worth higher (politely and rationally), she told me I would've gotten an A based on effort (lol, I went to office hours every single week, completed every homework, completed every single extra credit assignment), but had "bad recall" and got so nervous in the final oral exam I couldn't adequately explain a simple trigonometry concept. The department didn't give a shit about my concerns, and the C stood. It remains the only C I've ever gotten in college!

(Cool fun fact: some of the math trauma comes from failing algebra 2 and physics the same year in high school, where I had a teacher who enjoyed making fun of me, parading failing grades in front of the class for all to laugh at. Catholic school in the late 90s/early 2000s was a trip!)

Just after that, I took a hyper-accelerated general chemistry 1 (lecture + lab) class. It was my first science class since… 2004? I worked my entire butt off for a B. I saw chemistry equations in my sleep, pretty much nonstop. I was happy with the B!

Then I took a medical terminology class (A), a survey of chemistry class (A) to beef up my chem game before general chemistry 2, and Anatomy and Physiology 1 (A in lab, and my grade in lecture is still pending, because, wouldn't you know it, my professor messed up my grade. I hope he changes it!)

I'm currently taking general chemistry 2, and about to dive into anatomy and physiology 2 (lecture + lab). I'm at a place now, a year in, where I prep especially hard for certain classes, and do some kind of prep for almost everything. For example, I worked through every traditionally difficult chapter of my gen chem 2 book ahead of starting the class, so I'd have foundations to build on (and hopefully make the most obvious math mistakes first, so I'd get things right when it counts). I started prepping for organic chemistry last summer, and hope to have a few weeks of focus on that well before I take the class in earnest, since it tends to be a dream-crusher!

Why am I doing this? Why am I subjecting myself to what feels (honestly, at times) like a form of torture? Well, I want to be much, MUCH more effective for my patients. I've been an EMT for just under ten years now (it'll be ten years in March, and ten years in May of active service + consistent volunteering), and I've always wanted to know much more pharmacology, anatomy and physiology, pathophysiology, etc. I feel like a surface-level provider sometimes, I want more and to help more. Maybe I'll be able to go for further training one day. We'll see.

Another factor that led to my whole paying-out-of-pocket-to-go-to-undergrad-again: things are so dark in our country right now, and secondarily, the game industry and entire media apparatus are doing… poorly. There were times in the last couple of years (before Danielle's college 2.0 plan) I was so catatonically depressed that I would just sit on the floor, staring at the wall.

At least if I'm doing 20+ step acid-base titration problems, I'm not in that place.

There have also been parts of this process that are fantastic. It's confirmed a couple of things for me: I should've been taking science classes my whole life, and hey, I'm actually not stupid! Can You imagine? That with the right tools and motivation, I could teach myself a lot of the basics, prepare for difficult classes, and do really well? I've gotten 100s on quizzes and exams in the last couple of months, in tough classes that I was convinced I was way, WAY too stupid to ever take. I just got a 100 on a chemical kinetics quiz, the math and conceptual underpinnings of which I would've noped away from with prejudice at pretty much any other time in my life.

This feels good at a time when I've been… well, to be completely honest, eroding. In the last few years, I've felt smaller and somehow less than with each passing month. Sometimes the acceleration has felt faster than that, and other times, I had bright spots where I felt more like myself.

I say all of this knowing I am a very lucky person, and have a good life. I'm lucky to be so high functioning, despite the rotting lava percolating in my skull at all times. But the depression was well and truly kicking my ass, for a very, very long time. Ever since Fanbyte fell apart, really.

There's also this: some of my experiences have seriously cemented how I approach teaching my own students. I really value treating my students well, and giving them, frankly, a goddamn break if they are having a hard time. After some of the shit that I have seen (and had happen), I'm doubly committed to that. I even (finally!) made fresh trello board for teaching and organizing my lectures and improving them.

Southern Dragon Publishing - Business Control Process #goingbacktocollege