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My name is Katharine but my friends call me Katie. I'm 23 years old and I live in the beautiful Tampa Bay area with my fiance and little puppy dog. Originally, I grew up in Las Vegas and moved to Florida in 2004.
I've always been a good student until moving to Florida (the education system here SUCKS! and screwed me out of the honors courses I took while in Vegas. I mean really, does your state have "State Edition" textbooks? Why does Florida have "Florida Edition" textbooks? Nevada never had that..). The first Florida high school I attended, I requested to be transferred there for their NJROTC program as I was heavily involved in the United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps (USNSCC) back home because being commissioned as a Naval officer was my chosen career path.. no backups. That is what I was going to do (my cousin flies fighter jets in the Navy, and he even teaches pilots in the Air Force on certain fighters/bombers). I succeeded in the unit, but decided the next school year to transfer to a new technical high school to study automotive sciences (I have this thing for learning how to do stuff instead of paying other people to do it... ironically this is when I started driving my own car LOL).
*sidenote: I decided against the military for a few reasons... the first, the wars in the middle east were still raging on after 9/11/01; an amazing young man, a fellow comrade in NJROTC, and my prom date never made it back after becoming a US Marine and shipping out to the frontline [RIP Patrick Malone]; and secondly the ONE day when I went into the recruiter's office to schedule an ASVAB exam is when I was t-boned in my car while trying to leave the shopping center.. I'm a believer in the universe and timing, so I held off.
The end of my junior/beginning of my senior year I worked at a Ford dealership as a technician intern, and specialized in suspension/steering and automatic transmissions. This may sound weird, but working on cars is where I got the inspiration to work in the health care field. While taking clutch packs out of a RWD transmission and taking them apart, it felt like car surgery and I loved it. I loved the thought of taking car diagnostic skills and applying them to people. The tests you do to eliminate possibilities and ultimately find the problem for a smooth ride were exciting, thoughtful, and productive.
Long-story-short, I neglected to finish a pesky half-credit in math and ultimately did not graduate in 2007. Fast forward through two years of drifting through Atlanta, GA after-the-fact and you'll find me back in Florida two weeks away from moving back out West with no real plans. This is when me and my fiance (not so at the time) crossed paths again, and he is to thank for helping me find the right path to where I am now.
In 2009 I aced my GED exam and enrolled in my local community college aiming for their nursing program. Two years later, after finishing all of the pre-requisites needed to apply to their program I got to thinking that in the two years it took me to simply finish pre-req's I could have earned an Associates degree. If I stuck around and waited for admission into the community college's nursing program (plus two years of nursing coursework + clinical rotations), by the time I had finished I could have earned a four year baccalaureate degree. So I went to an advisor and looked at other options. One year after making that decision I graduated from HCC with an Associates degree in Medical Sciences earlier this month, 2012.
Nursing is still an option because there is a BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) degree available at the university I will be attending, but there are many many more fields of study within healthcare that I will aim for something else that relates to patient wellness.
Now it is 2012 and I start classes at the University of South Florida in August of this year aiming for a Bachelors degree in Biomedical Science, and possibly a second Bachelors in Political Science. Hopefully this blog will help others, and in another three years I can write about the MCAT, helpful info guides, and the medical school admissions process as I hope I will be taking part in it.
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I've definitely learned important subject matter, but better than that I learned more about myself and the decisions that I make. With each twist, turn, obstacle, and ultimate decision I am molding myself as an adult who's looking after their own life and future. I know 23 is definitely an adult age, but really 20 years old is when the "hey let's figure out where I want life to take me" thoughts started coming in. Yea I started late (especially comparing me next to the youngest student in my CC graduation, 16 freakin' years old!), but it wasn't too late. The oldest graduate in our class is 73.
No one is ever too young or too old for any education.
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You should never be discouraged from continuing educational endeavors based on stigmas, statistics, or "Negative Nancys,"
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if you truly follow your heart, gut, and mind, you will never be lead astray.
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Some things and their subsequent timing happen for a reason...
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