It might come true

When the phone call about nursing school came we were both kind of dumbstruck. I mean, Yes! Of course! Hooray! But also, Wait? What? Where?!?! The nice lady from Augusta who just called and dropped a bomb on us said she needed an answer by noon the next day. So we told her we would call her back. We spent that night thinking through all of the implications of him accepting the spot.

He will be moving for two years and we haven’t even been married a year.

We will be supporting two households with one income instead of one household with two incomes.

We have a dog and 2 cats.

We spent the first six months of marriage figuring out how to be married and live together well and we’d finally hit a sweet spot.

We will be apart.

When Michael and I met in Alabama I was coming off of the roughest year of my life. I’d moved to Kentucky for graduate school and was faced with a lot of challenges. I was the only one in my program and had a hard time meeting people and making friends. I was almost 500 miles from home and had only ever lived 65 miles away before. Graduate school was so so hard and due to unforeseen circumstances my roommate had to move home so I was living alone. I felt very alone and lost and I was very depressed. The first night we found out about nursing school my biggest fear was that living alone would mean that I would feel lost and confused and depressed like I had when I was in Kentucky. I couldn’t bear the thought of pulling onto our street and seeing an empty driveway. I have since realized that this situation is nothing like that one, but boy did those fears come rushing back initially.

Michael called the next morning to accept the position and was met with yet another hurdle. He had taken Statistics and Microbiology as the school recommended but did not take Chemistry 2, because they had not mentioned it. He had taken it in the past and gotten a D, which was not acceptable for the program. They apologized for the mistake and told them he would no longer be accepted. We were crushed. But Michael was not going down without a fight. With the help of his advisor he learned that if he could take and pass the CLEP exam in Biology 1 and 2 that score, combined with other science classes on his transcripts would fulfill the Chem 2 requirement.

So, in addition to course work and upcoming final exams in Stat and Micro he was tasked with studying for, scheduling, taking, and passing the CLEP. He was admitted to the program provisionally pending his class grades and test score. And he proceeded to study without ceasing for two weeks.

He got an A in Statistics and passed his CLEP yesterday! The Micro final is next Thursday and Friday. I could be more proud of my husband. At this point we are 99% sure that he will be moving to Augusta in 2 weeks! All of his hard work and determination paid off, but seriously, you should see the dent in the couch where he sits to study :)