July 31, 2008

Massage School? and Dream


I spent a good part of the other day calling vet schools to inquire about getting in to one of them. Most, point blank, replied, "we don't take transfers, goodbye"--including Alabama, where I would have in-state tuition. Georgia said that they very rarely accept transfers--in 5 years they've only had one transfer, and she transferred into 2nd year (not 3rd or 4th), and had straight A's--but I'm welcome to spend the application fee and apply. I already knew this is what I would find out, but it got me feeling pretty depressed.
My school loans go into payment Oct 1st, and I've not had a single job interview in 5 months. I am assuming, therefore, that I will not have a job by Oct 1st that would allow me to pay my debt payments regularly and on time. My options are 1) default on the loan, let them garner 15% of my wages, and lose the possibility of significant savings that are promised if I don't default on the loan over so many on time payments, 2) defer my loans because I'm in school. I think #2 is really the only one that makes much sense.
And so I've been considering going to massage school. I've been throwing the idea around in my head for a couple months, but I feel very pressured into it at this point. My head says there are many pros: "it's a good idea, there's a good school in lexington, I'll have a marketable skill when I'm done that would allow me to have my own hours, it pays better than what I'm doing right now (hopefully I would be able to make my loan payments?), it's only a 9 month program, I think I have intuitive sense for massage, and the anatomy/physiology part would come easily for me." The only cons are that I would have to commit to it, and it may interfere with the couple of dance things that I have lined up in November (and potentially Oct & Jan) which I was really excited about. I'll have to check into make-up policies a bit more, I think.
Meanwhile, I had a dream last night that I went back to school (Tufts), and I was scheduled in the Emergency Room with two other 4th yr students. I kind of snuck myself in and signed myself up, without the permission of the school. The night went okay, there were no senior doctors on--it was just us students--and we were able to fix all the animals that came in. I had a lot of anxiety about it, though, wondering if I'd be able to do what the three of us were doing together alone (was I good enough to be a doctor on my own? Did I rely totally on others that knew what they were doing?). The opportunity presented itself to prove my worth, and I took it. But the opportunity was very dream-like and makes no sense in real life: We had curtains full of skinned, dead calves come in, and I ate 9 of them. Me, who has been vegetarian since 1992, took all the meat off one of the calves and ate it all. Then I took the head and limbs meat off 6 more and ate that. I ate the flank meat off 2 more calves, and finished by popping all 18 eyes of the 9 calves down my throat. There! Was that not proof enough that I was serious about vet medicine?!?!
I know it doesn't make sense. It was a very stressful dream. It felt so urgent and dire. Uggghhh. Am I going to be having these sorts of dreams for the rest of my life? God, I hope not.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you should start a really snarky blog that gets lots of traffic, so that you can sell ad space and make insane money by not contributing to society.
it is a hell of a lot better than this working your tail off bullshit that leaves me crying and exhausted two days a week. just a thought.
eileen (at a personal low today).