The nitty gritty of financing an education

So nursing school is not free. It's not cheap either, especially the way I've chosen to do it, which rightthisveryminute. It's the way I tend to do everything. The less planning I have to do, the better. It's more exciting that way...and I'm not 27 anymore.

Actually, school doesn't start until May 2008, but it still doesn't leave much time for saving. In fact, I have written myself a strict pay off debt plan for the next 7 months which will leave me precisely at $0 when I start school. (Hey, at least it's not a negative number.) It also means that all of the $35,000 tuition will be in the form of loans, as well as my cost of living. I'm guessing I'll be starting to pay off about $50,000 in debt when I start my new job as a nurse in the summer of 2009. Yay!

It's a small price to pay for job security for the rest of my life! Right? After feeling what it's like to be destitute and unemployable for a year and a half, getting call backs and job offers sure sounds good. The staffing people at my NEW job in my NEW field started calling me asking if I could work extra the DAY I got off orientation. They've called me nearly every day since then, too. Yesterday morning I got off at 7 a.m. At 8 a.m., I got a call asking for CNA's to work that day, anytime, until 7 p.m.

That's a far cry from shooting out my resume to dozens of companies and hearing nothing. It's a glorious feeling, in fact, after sitting through interview after interview and being told, "yeah, you're great, but why hire you when we can get someone with 10 years of experience and pay them less than what you're asking?" (Note: even after I succumbed to the realization that I'd never make more than $12 an hour in Portland, I STILL couldn't get hired doing what I wanted to do.)

Ok so that's my positive nursing school post for today. Let the record show I ate brownies for breakfast, and have also started biting my nails.

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