Old Dog, New Tricks

I've joked many times in the last few years about my multiple mid-life crises. Nursing school, one more baby, moving back to the US and my triathlon races all seemed to qualify. But the truth is that I've always liked the idea of making changes and have been (stupidly?) convinced that they would all be unqualified improvements on the status quo. And really, most of them have been, even though I've still not broken 29:30 on a 5K and am still frightened of swimming in open water.

So the latest plan, and the most current self-improvement, is to start my Masters in Nursing (MSN) at UT. The course is about 4 semesters, and because of their enrollment procedures, I won't officially enroll on the program until Fall 2012. That also happens  to be when Freddie starts kindergarten, and when Lucy starts university, so it's appropriate, I think.  I am, to my embarrassment, the last member in my family to get a master's degree (Rita is working on her PhD), which feels funny because I always considered myself academic, but the UK is less open -- or was for the last 20 years -- to people changing careers and direction and anyway, MSNs are thin on the ground there.

And in fairness, I flirted with several "second careers", including law, violin teaching, and, if I'm honest, horticulture/garden design, before settling on nursing. So I have some years to make up.  My plan is to study the Public Health Nursing concentration and use my years of experience in socialized medicine, as patient and nurse, to single-handedly transform the US healthcare system. Or not. But somebody needs to do something, right?

Because my undergraduate degree is not in nursing, I am enrolling through the "bridge"program, which requires me to take four prerequisite courses, some of which are available online. I am taking the final exam in the first course, Elementary Statistics, next Tuesday, and that is why The Basic Practice of Statistics, is in my Current Reads list.

This stats course has been great, actually. It's been great because it's been 28 years since I took any kind of math class, and I never had stats or calculus; a fact which I'm thoroughly ashamed of now. Many of the other students in the class were not born when I took College Algebra and Trig my senior year of high school. I haven't publicized this fact, as you will appreciate. It's also been great because I've taken the class at Austin Community College which I've found to be a fabulous institution, far, FAR better organized than my nursing program at the University of Surrey. My stats teacher is Bulgarian, with a PhD in the subject and a passion for teaching it to novices. She also teaches at St. Edwards University, a private liberal arts college in Austin, and works for the OIG busting Medicare fraud, among other admirable things.

And it's also great because I'm getting an A.  Until the last test, I had a 98% average (she puts bonus questions on the tests so total points are often over 100) but I bombed the last test after missing two classes, so now have only 90%. I intend to redeem myself on the final. I just need to nail down two-sample t distributions from last time and make sure I'm proficient with chi-square and regression inference, which we learned in the last two weeks.

Once this class is over, I apply to UT, initially as a "non degree-seeking graduate student", which means I don't yet need to sit the GRE. I'm planning to take two more bridge courses in the fall, complete my formal application (including the GRE) by the December 1st deadline, take another prereq and maybe some initial courses in the spring semester and start the full program in fall 2012.

So here's my excuse for missing two stats classes:

Phil's mother came to visit and we had a great time. This photo is from the Rollingwood 5K race, which we all ran. Phil won his age group (Thundercloud Subs vouchers!), Barbara was runner-up in the over 70s, and I managed not to walk. Pathetic, yes, but it was really, REALLY hot. If Jess hadn't been injured, we'd have made a killing.