2021 Blog Goals

 Have you ever seen the movie, The Social Network? The beginning of the movie is perhaps my favorite part - when Jesse Eisenberg playing Mark Zuckerberg creates the FaceMash site that compares the pictures of girls around Harvard.

Putting aside the politics of the site, I love how he blogged simultaneously to his hacking and coding. 

In my first semester, I found myself often using the class discussion boards to think aloud about problems. Therefore, I'm going to use this blog as a way to think through my classes and anything else I want to ponder aloud. 

Feel free to contribute! 

Transitional Realities

 My kids, like most or all of your kids, have been learning "remotely" since March 2020. CPS (Chicago Public Schools) has a plan to return on February 1st 2021. We have all been looking forward to that for a very long time.

It's not exactly that we're sick of each other, but that it would simply be nice to spend some regularly scheduled time apart. 

However, there is definitely going to be a cost to everything going "back to normal." 

Today, I took a picture of my daughter working on her iPad with our dog asleep at her feet. That will be a thing of the past. Eating lunch together. Hearing what they're learning. Seeing the teachers on the screen along with the other students. It has been a rare peek into the school lives our my children.

So, if you're like me and the kids will be going back soon, make sure you take a few pictures - both with your camera and with your mind. We will not get this time back. It will be a time that we look back on fondly in many ways. We'll miss the time that we spent a year together.

Back to School!

 Long overdue is the "announcement" on this blog that I've begun my pursuit of a career in Nursing. 

Helping others is something that comes naturally to me. While never up for Homemaker of the Year, caring for my wife and kids for the last 14 years has been some of the best life experience I could have gained for this career. For real - I've handled a lot of body fluid over the years. A lot of brown, yellow, and red. And probably some white. 

This coming Tuesday, January 19th 2021, I will begin my second semester at Chicago City Colleges - Malcolm X college. In the fall, I took and was able to get As in BIO 121 and CHEM 121. It is my goal to not get anything besides an A in my classes all the way through. Humble, huh?

While those were challenging courses, they were merely intro courses. This semester, I'll take BIO 226 and 233 - Anatomy & Physiology and Microbiology, respectively. My ability to maintain that high level of academics will tell me how realistic that pursuit of perfection is.

On top of my two courses, I also achieved a certification as a CNA - Certified Nursing Assistant. It was a 5-week intensive course. Unfortunately, I came down with COVID-19 the week of the final and had to not only delay my final exam for a month, but that cost me the possibility of officially entering the RN program this spring. The good news is that I'm still able to take courses that I would have had to take for my degree. Perhaps that will allow me to work as a CNA while I'm in nursing school.

That is the other side - that I am going to start looking for work. Hopefully, I'll be able to find something close to home, but we'll see! Wish me luck!

Watching Children Sleep

I walked into my kids' rooms tonight at 12:30 to day good night. It had been an especially long time since I've seen my now 13_year old son fast asleep like that. It kind of made me sad.

All better now!