The Path Less Traveled

During her senior year of High School, she had moved back to her childhood school.

You know, the one she had to leave because she chose to live with mom. Mom found love. Love made her move, meaning she had to go with her. Yeah, that childhood school.

Living with her same age cousin, younger cousin and their mom; her aunt. She was witness to a teen having a probation officer during this time. Which pushes her to enroll into “Social Services, Corrections and Criminal Justice”.

During her first semester of the program, she quickly realized the material did not interest her. Given that, she decided it best to switch majors. If learning about your chosen career doesn’t interest you then she could only assume that the job wouldn’t interest her either.

She was young and dumb. She will never undstand what I’m about to tell you. Y’all, she ghosted those first semester classes in the end. Only passing a few, but failing most. Little did she know, it would haunt her forever.

So she entered the nursing program. While studying general courses, needed to enter clinicals, she fell pregnant. Unfortunately, her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.

This was very taxing on her school work. How could anyone focus after such a loss? So a second semester of mostly failed courses became the result. Meaning, financial aid was at risk of being taken away for not progressing at a certain rate.

She was advised to submit an appeal. So not only did she loose her first child and fail a few more classes, she had to explain it to someone in writing. Someone she didn’t even know.

The appeal was approved.

Onto third semester of college. Retaking the generals she failed and adding on new generals.

The loss of her first pregnancy only encourages her to try again. In her mind, school was important. But creating a family at a young age seemed to be more important. Not a single cell in her body took into consideration how hard it is to care for a child while in college. And thus, by the end of the semester she was pregnant. And again, she had failed another class. A&P 2 was a B!TCH to pass.

Pregnancy wasn’t going to get in the way of attending classes. So onto fourth semester of classes. More generals. More retakes. Developmental Psychology was also a class she struggled with. One more failure.

Fifth semester. Large and in charge. She takes it by the balls and passes. Last semester before giving birth. And last semester before entering clincals. She did it.

Summer off of school, adjusting to the life of motherhood. Momming ain’t easy either. The time quickly flew by.

Hello sixth semester of college. And hello first semester of clinicals! With a baby on her hip. Cake. Passed it. She must have gotten a little too cocky because second semester was not as successful. Second semester of clinicals had to be repeated.

Repeating second semester of clinicals was close to her last straw. But again, she had a baby to think about. So she pushed through. She slayed it.

Last semester of college. Last semester of cliniclas. Last semester before being handed her LPN. All her hard work paid off.

Within months, she had passed her state exam and got her first nursing job.

So yeah, she took longer than expected to receive that degree. She reminds herself of that from time to time. She read somewhere that in order to succeed, you must first fail. Failing is only a stepping stone in your path to success. It reminds you of what you have overcome. And to help guide you on your further endeavors.

She knows some of you out there will snarl about that. Those of you who disapprove of failure.

To each their own.

I guess the moral of this story is GET BACK UP AGAIN !