Accepted

I was scared to death. Imagine yourself looking at the next sequence, excessively chalking and slapping your legs. The chalk doesn't seem to be sticking like it does off the ground, you focus on your heart rate lowering which makes your heart beat faster. You question your breathing, is it to hard, to slow... You know the next moves better than anyone as your way to get to sleep is imagining the sequence in your head over and over. Your skin hurts, but you don't feel ready to leave the rest. Then with a little hesitation you go, almost in autopilot, and start climbing.

That is exactly how I felt when I got home from a weekend in Little River and found a letter from my school. It wasn't suppose to be here for another 3 weeks, and it caught me off guard. I slowly opened the sticky envelope not knowing what words I was hoping to read. They read accepted!!! I was accepted into nursing school. A feat that wasn't hard a few years ago, has become very competitive. Especially in community colleges that have an over run campus anyway. The slow economy brought back many unemployed and it seems like everyone you run into is going into the nursing profession.

I never expected to go to college as my parents own a sign company installing and servicing commercial signs. I had worked there for 2 years out of high school and made a deal with my mom. I would go to school if I could have a 2 month leave and go to the Red River Gorge. I had been climbing for almost a year, and wanted to get out and see life on my own terms. I quickly realized I wanted a career, not a job. Nursing seemed to be the most applicable profession after meeting people from all over having time off, with a sustainable bank account. I'm close to my dirt bagging roots as we all are, but I don't want to wake up in a van in 10 years out of obligation, but by choice.

Now I have been in college for 3 semesters doing all of my pre recs for nursing and taking care of all the classes I need to graduate. Last semester I heard they had over 600 apply and only took around 100. I have been thinking about the 1 in 6 odds since, with very little confidence, I turned in my application. Receiving that letter was a feeling that no route or boulder has given me. I start school in January.