This hurts.

It really hurts me to say this, but I'm withdrawing completely from San Juan College. Between having to work full time as the sole provider in my household and the demands placed by the vet tech distance learning program, as well as the high cost of driving to clinicals twice a week, not to mention the overwhelmingly painful physical and emotional costs of working at the clinic, I can't do it anymore.

It was all going fine until I started clinicals. Which made me really think - is this dream something I can do? I thought it was. I was wrong. Physically, I don't think I'll ever be able to go into a 9-5 (or 7-7 in this case) job and perform like everyone else. I get so tired that I end up sleeping the next two days away just to recover - by which time I have to be back at the clinic anyway.

One of the things I'll miss dearly is the English department. I think I got more excited over those classes than anything else, despite my love for animals and everything else. The creative writing class inspired me. I don't care that I've spent over the past year writing to pay the bills - sometimes it takes a great, dedicated teacher and a group of students willing to challenge you and speak to you that makes all the difference.

That's why I'm enrolling in Southern New Hampshire University's online BA program for Creative Writing and English Language studies. I know there are plenty of people ready to line up and tell me that you can't make money writing - well, they're damn wrong. I also know a good deal of people who will tell me that a degree in creative writing is like tossing your money in a sinkhole. That's fine and dandy. I know I can write, and I know I can write well. But I also hear so many people - regular Joes and educators alike - stressing the need for a degree. Any degree. In anything. That little piece of paper means so much more, sometimes it seems, than the knowledge itself. Which is wrong. But at least I'll have the security of knowing I've got a piece of paper worth a whole hell of a lot in a field that I'm good at and in a field I know I love. Maybe not as much as I love saving little fuzzy creatures, but one that I love well enough and has been with me almost my entire life.

I'm going to miss the classes and the people in them. I'll miss yapping around on the SJC message boards and hearing Dr. Wright's playful banter in his lectures. I'll really miss my dreams - coming to terms with the fact that what you WANT to do and would LOVE to do aren't always the same things as what you're physically ABLE to do just sucks. I really hate it. Secretly, I think I'll miss the English classes most of all.

But I won't miss the heartwrenching feeling of having to choose between the gas money to get to clinicals and food. I won't miss the painful choice of working or cleaning kennels. I won't miss having to split my focus on two things and feeling discouraged because I can't manage to do complex mathematics in my head. I won't miss the physical fatigue and the exhaustion to the point of wanting to die, on a real and literal level.

I'll miss a lot of it. I really will, but I think, or at least I hope, I'm making the right choice.