Undergrad life - Part I

School has been a long process for me.

In high school I was the smart, quiet girl. When I applied for university, I was accepted everywhere I applied. I was not sure of where I wanted to be. I knew I would be in a science program. During high school I had wanted to be a pharmacist, a medical researcher, a geneticist, an optometrist. I had applied to Guelph, Western, Carleton, Brock, Laurier and Queens.

Sidenote: When I was 16, I decided I wanted to go to Ryerson for their now defunct Applied Pharmaceutical Chemistry program. I was told of the downtown campus. The scary campus in downtown Toronto. The big city campus. I changed my mind based on fear of the big city and ultimately I did not apply to a single school in the Toronto area.

Initially I had wanted to go to Guelph. For some reason I changed my mind and ended up at Brock for their Co-op Biotechnology program. I imagine it had something to do with the entrance scholarship.

Most people would assume that I would have graduated in four years and gone on with my life. However - this is not what happened.

My first year was awful. I didn't get good marks. I hated the city of St. Catharines. The campus was blah. My roommates - not great. I stayed for a second year at Brock. I ended up spending weeks at a time in Toronto with my boyfriend whom I had met near the end of first year through another friend.
So during second year I decided that I was done with Brock. I was miserable. I wasn't doing well at all and I was no longer sure of what I wanted to be.

I had planned to take a year off and go back to another school. I moved to Toronto.

Toronto. That big city that I was convinced many years ago that was too scary a place to go to school. Downtown in the scary big city where a girl from the suburbs won't make it?!

I took two years off from formal schooling.  I worked full time jobs and travelled. I took a photography course. I thought about what I wanted to do, spent hours researching schools and jobs and possibilities.
I decided I really wanted to work in health care.
And my boyfriend asked me something in a conversation one day - "When you have a baby, are you going to use a midwife?"
Huh? Midwives are a thing still? I had no idea. So I looked it up on the google.

And then what? I was 22.

Tomorrow: what happened next!