Since graduation, though, I’ve spent a decent amount of time with my pets in the veterinary office.  What I witness there every time is people who enjoy their work.  I see people who are genuinely concerned about your pets – and you!  Somewhere along the line, I realized that is where I want to be.  I could go to school to become a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, but I feel a little old at a start since it would take so long.  And I’m not sure I really want to be studying that hard.  I just want to go there and assist the doctor.  So I realized that what I want to do is be a Veterinary Technician.  I looked around and found that the nearest place I could attain that kind of education was at Moraine Park Technical College – and their closest location is in West Bend.

So I set about the application process back in March.  Filled out the application, sent off for transcripts, etc.  Yesterday, I attended an Admissions Meeting for the program.  Thankfully, the admissions folk recognize my prior BA and are giving me plenty of advanced standing for that.  However, my high school has yet to send in that transcript – and when I called them today, they said that the person who does that is out until the 13th.  Ugh!  Oh, well.  I am quite happy that the year and a half of high school chemistry I took will exempt me from taking chemistry here.

Today I registered for classes and found out (surprise!) that two of the three classes I can take are full (unless I want to drive to Fond du Lac – and I don’t).  So I registered for the one class I could (It’s online!  Woo-hoo!) and I will take the others next semester.  Once I finish these courses and complete my 50 hours of job shadowing I will be eligible to begin taking my core vet tech courses.  Since that’s impossible by this fall and they begin the cycle only once every fall, I have no real rush to finish these courses – as long as I get that done by the summer semester next year, I can (probably) begin my core courses next fall.

So here goes!  My class (Intro to Ethics) begins on Aug 24th.  Wish  me luck!  Now all I have to do is straighten out that transcript thing and set up some job shadowing.

I also just published a review and comparison of the Michael Moore film “Slacker Uprising” with the Morgan Spurlocke film “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden”.  If you’ve seen either of the films (or both) please comment on my views – I would love to know what other people thought.  You can find the article here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1258483/documentary_showdown_where_in_the_world.html?cat=40.

I also recieved a reply from a major magazine (which shall remain unnamed) that seemed interested in reading future submissions, so I am going to be brainstorming about new topics – if you have any ideas for me, please let me know.

Thank you so much for reading this and please visit my links above!!!!

I have published two of my previous blog posts there.  My profile is located here.  You can find my article on the Eee PC here.  And my article on the bailout of the automobile industry is here.

I would really appreciate it if you would visit these pages and give me a page view.  I would love it if you could pass on the links to people you know that might be interested in the topics.  Every page view puts me closer to making a little bit of money.

Let me say, also, that money is not my only motivation.  I really just want to share my ideas and perceptions with as many people as possible.  It might seem vain to think that what I have to say might be interesting to a wide variety of people, but it’s something that I have to believe.  I have been writing since elementary school and I think I’m pretty good at organizing my thoughts and presenting them in an interesting way.  If you disagree, please leave me comments so I can take your ideas for  improvement into consideration.  I am passionate about sharing my ideas and writing in a concise, engaging way.

So please visit my articles at Associated Content and help me share my ideas, earn some money, and hone my writing skills.  Thank you!

The biggest lie that I was told was that lieing on my application (is that what it is?) to get into the Army was standard – everyone did it and it was okay.  I guess I don’t want to go into too much detail, lest there be legal implications on the flipside, but I enlisted in the Army Reserve in 1997.  I did not understand the implications of this action.  My recruiter promised me the world.  He promised to take me running and work out with me to help me prepare for basic.  He promised me that there was no sexual harassment in the Army anymore – it was against all the rules.  He promised me that I would form the deepest friendships while I was there (that’s a laugh – I think I corresponded with a few of them for about a year).

Had a been 100% truthful on my application, they would have sent me home as unfit to serve.  Had I been left to myself to fill out the papers, I would have been 100% honest.  That’s how I am.  They have qualifications in place for a reason.  How would you like to be under attack with someone who would rather die than defend his/her own life?  You don’t have much chance of survival.  But I filled out these papers with Sgt. So&So coaching me on the “correct” answers.  He told me that, in many cases, mental health issues aren’t severe enough to report.  And occasional drug use (without dependence, treatment, or punitive legal action) is inconsequential.  And, in many cases, childhood asthma, allergies, and other medical problems can simply be removed from existence without repercussions.  Not that any of these situations applied to me more than anybody else.  You learn a lot when you have to answer questions about things you don’t normally consider – so you ask about the “what if”.  And that’s when you find out that a strung-out junkie with years of manic-depression and medical problems could be your “buddy” on the killing field.  Do you really want that?  I sure as hell wouldn’t.

Of my military career – it was short.  I went to basic training.  I screwed up my ankles, and graduated with shin splints and stress fractures in both feet.  I went on to AIT (job training) for Railway Equipment Repair.  Yeah – it was short – 5 weeks.  They gave us our final and let us out a few days early so we could get home in time for the 4th of July.  I screwed my feet up some more, running 7-10 miles every morning on already fractured bones and pained shins.  I learned how to numb everything with ibuprofen and Icy Hot.  You could smell me coming from a mile away, but it was necessary for me to walk. 

They say that privates aren’t supposed to “date” each other in basic or AIT.  It’s supposed to be punishable by court marshall.  People find the most creative ways to use each others’ bodies for, um, gratification and do that in the most interesting of places.  Think of basic/AIT as the poor man’s (woman’s) college campus and you sort of get the idea.  Only those seriously committed to someone abstain from the flirtation and what follows. 

And as far as sexual harassment and “equality”, it’s exactly how you imagine.  The majority of people involved in the military are male.  Until our society changes completely and women are truly respected by ALL men, sexual harassment and gender-based inequality will remain the norm – especially in male-dominated fields like the military.  It may not be as overt as it used to be, but it’s there, threatening every woman every moment. 

“But that was ten years ago”, you say.  Trust me, if ten years ago this shit was going on – it’s gotten worse since then.  Have you seen how our society has changed overall in the last ten years?  If anything, the treatment of women has lost ground – not gained it.  The military will only reflect that. 

Now, I know I was too naive to enter into this thing and understand what I was doing.  But at the time, I needed someone to pay for my college tuition and the Army said it was going to do that.  And it may have, had I remained an active member and honored my contract.  But after I got back from AIT, I went to a few months of drill.  I’d say it was about 3/4 of a year.  I suffered MORE sexual harassment – and this time I couldn’t get away as easily.  And everyone in my company already knew each other (except for the other two people I graduated AIT with) and were buddies.  If I tried to make my complaint and make something happen, I had no idea what might happen to me.  In reality, I probably would have been reassigned and made to press charges of some sort.  However, I didn’t have it in me to put up a fight not knowing what the consequences might have been.  So I stopped going.  I simply stopped appearing at drill every month.  They would call and call.  And I would never call back. 

I was scared as hell that they would come to my house and take me to jail for going AWOL or just for insubordination, but that never happened.  I got a call once or twice from female soldiers I had never met who wanted to help me file my complaint, but I continually declined.  At this point, I just wanted out.  There was an additional element of being a reservist that made me feel like I was living two lives and I hated it.  And the Army had seriously altered my attitude towards everything.  I was impatient, angry all the time, and incredibly mean.  So I wanted to try to “de-program” myself as quickly as I could so I could get back to my life and be happy again.  Eventually, the Army went away.  I had to pay back the small part of the signing bonus that I had already received, but after that they left me alone. 

At first I didn’t understand why they didn’t seek me out and force me to take responsibility for the papers I signed and the contract that I was ignoring.  But then I realized that it wouldn’t make sense for them to do that.  Would you want to force people to honor their commitment to the military when they really didn’t want to be there?  How good do you think an army made up of people like that would be?  Horrible.  Any sign of danger and they’d be running home.  That’s why they didn’t pursue me.  I was less of a threat staying home than I was participating in the Army. 

Anyway, that’s pretty much my Army story.  There’s more, but that’s the basic overview.  My advice to everyone (except the people who feel strongly the need to place themselves in the line of danger to serve the honor of their country) is DON’T JOIN THE MILITARY!  And they should make sure people know what they are getting themselves into before letting them sign up. 

I don’t really know what kind of discharge I received.  I just applied for a copy of my service records yesterday, out of pure curiosity.  So we’ll see what that holds in store . . . I can’t wait to see that document in the mail. 

If you have your own recruitment horror story or question for me about my time in the service, drop me a line or leave a comment.

I liked working at a pharmacy. I enjoyed when I could help customers decide between different over the counter medicines and I enjoyed a high level of responsibility for people’s health as I became more involved and started learning how to be a pharmacy technician. I should’ve stayed there so I could do that without having to go to school for it.

I never really liked working in a bank. I enjoyed some things, like learning about how different financial accounts work and stuff like that. But who really enjoys being a teller? Or calculating people’s amortization tables? I will say that I was young and immature when I was doing that. Perhaps now I could take a financial job and make it into something with purpose. I’ve been interviewing for Personal Banker jobs, and I do sort of feel like I could use that to make myself feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. Humor me, for a minute. I’ve definitely had helpful personal bankers who got me approved for loans when I needed them and helped me navigate the bank system. That’s good stuff. Personal bankers can have a profound impact on a person’s life. Maybe I could help people.

I quit banking to go to school and school made me feel alive. I tried, after graduation, to focus on getting a job that would enable me to sustain that “alive” feeling. I looked in the nonprofit sector and in publishing. Neither of these markets are very big in SE WI. That makes finding a job in one of them extremely difficult. And with only some volunteering experience, there were other people who were easily more qualified than I was. So I ended up at Barnes & Noble, which is not a bad place. But retail, in general, is not where a person wants to build a career. And that’s what I was starting to do. I was in management – thankfully I was at the bottom of the management totem pole. But I was enough “in” to be able to experience the depth of the many divides. One was between corporate and store. Another was between store management and employees. Both of these were enough to drive me insane. I hope I left the place in okay order, though. I would hate to hear that I left a mess for someone else to clean up. The one person who deserves to have to clean up any messes is the one delegating.

This brings me to the present. I’m enjoying what I’m doing now, except for the anxiety that comes from having no income nor health insurance. Other than that, I’m perfectly content – but in a perfect world I’d skip looking for a job and start in on the things that really matter to me. We’d get rid of a few of our luxuries (don’t laugh at the word – we all have them if we live in USA) and buy our own health insurance and I’d go to town doing something meaningful. Writing, working in the nonprofit sector part time, and keeping my home would be my my job. And I’d be free to have children without trying to “check out” of a workforce that I wouldn’t be a part of to begin with. I don’t even want to start on how child birth and rearing can interfere with the most hard-working women’s careers.

But for now, I trudge on looking to get a nine to five with good benefits so that within about a year I can (hopefully) check out for six to eight weeks to have a baby, then go back and maybe do it again. Is there any meaningful corporate work out there at all? Oh, maybe if you work for Patagonia, Working Assets, or other similar companies. Are any of those in SE WI? No. The closest we’ve got is . . . I give up. I don’t know if we have anything comparable. We’ll see.

Hey, if anybody’s reading and has advice, I’d appreciate hearing it.