Get to know me.

Here is a little bit about me:

I am a 22 year old female and I live in Northern Arizona. I've been married for two years and have enjoyed creating a wonderful life with my husband and our dog. I am a heavily tattooed lady with the opposite attitude of a 'stereotypical' tattooed person after being raised in a large Mormon family (obviously I'm no long Mormon). I love to read, cook, quilt, and am a complete introvert. So basically I am an old lady. I follow the paleo diet and think it is the best thing ever since it gives me so much energy and makes my brain function better, but I am not above driving an hour and a half with my husband to eat at the nearest In-N-Out. (Minus the bun, please, I have celiac disease.)  I am a big proponent for raw milk: straight from tit to jar is how I like my milk. Exercise is just as important to me as eating and school and without it I wither away. Heavy weight lifting and mountain biking are my main jam.

(I know I won't use my real name on here and am still undecided if I'll show my actual face or not. Oh, the mystery! So here are some that don't show my face very well, but at least give you an idea so you don't picture me as an ugly lady with a hairy chin.)

I qualified for a scholarship that required me to be 200% below poverty level and I received it, so guess what that means? I'm poor! Expect blog posts about living frugally as a married student who still manages to eat healthy and pay her bills in an expensive town.

I started out my education with the intentions of teaching special education but quickly realized it wasn't my thing, as much as I loved the idea of it. Our public school system is just so terrible and I feel like I would just be another broken cog in the machine, with no way to fix anything. I was interested in psychology, but wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with my life, so I worked full time at a public library while taking my liberal arts courses to obtain a general associates degree. After taking Bio 181, I realized how much I LOVED the human body and all of the astounding things it does to function. Seriously, it is so amazing that my heart races just thinking about it. Somehow by the end of the semester I had decided I wanted to be a nurse. Literally an overnight decision that just clicked without any given thought.

I had never talked about nursing before so I was hesitant to bring it up to my (then) fiancé. Would he think I was totally insane? Would he think I was having a midlife crisis at 20 years old? I mean, BLOOD and NEEDLES were involved! In typical male fashion, he just looked at me and said, 'Cool, I think that's a great idea!' and went back to whatever he was doing.

And that was that! The next day I checked the pre-reqs on the universities web page, banged those out over a couple years, and here I am about to start a BSN nursing program in January of 2014, with a graduation date of June 2016. That seems like a millions years away but I'm sure it'll fly by quickly.

The end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.

That title above sums up my life right now.

All my life I've been searching for a dream job that until two years ago, I didn't even know I wanted: nursing. Once I had that realization that I've found the thing I've been searching for the entire twenty years of my life, I wanted to be a nurse so bad. I've spent the last two years of my life striving to get perfect grades with the dreams of getting into nursing school and now it's happened. I've been accepted into a difficult program as 1 of 30 students out of hundreds applicants. SHIT.

Now that it's real, I feel like my life is finally starting. Like I'm that much closer to being the person I want to be. With that comes the realization that I am so close to actually being a nurse! I have two and a half years in my program and then bam, it's real life. I'll be saving lives, just like that.

I see the last couple of years as the beginning of my college career which is now coming to a close. I'm no longer going to be a 'normal' college student and will no longer have to take insignificant classes, like humanities or history. I get to solely focus on nursing classes. So in that way, I feel like it's the end of the beginning.

The flip side of that is that I'm now at the beginning of the end. I'm so close, yet so far, from achieving my dream and it seems insane, like someone will come along and swoop everything away at any moment. But alas, I will make it to the end and guess what? I'll be right back at the beginning again, starting my life as an actual RN. Pretty exciting, huh?


Follow my blog with Bloglovin as I prep to start my BSN program in January and eventually become an RN! I'll write about many things, like getting into nursing school, eating healthy while being a student with a busy schedule, living frugally, and of course all about what I'm learning and my experience in school!