musings . . .

Can spending time outdoors make you a calmer, smarter person? What about classrooms – should they include time outside? According to this article on Science Daily’s website, yes. They say that there’s a bacteria that there is a bacteria commonly found in soil that people often breathe in or ingest, and that when this bacteria was tested on lab rats, it produced rats that were able to act faster than others and show fewer signs of anxiety. Who knew?

Anyone out there who was a bit older than I am might remember an oil spill in 1979. Here Rachel Maddow compares that spill with our current situation. I can’t help but wonder why we haven’t learned or developed more effective ways of dealing with these problems.

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Now this is just creepy. A man has demonstrated human infection by a computer virus. While this may sound sci-fi to many of us, there are plenty of scientists devoted to studying the future and future technology. A quick skim of a book by one of the field’s most visible authors, Ray Kurzweil, will familiarize anyone with some more ideas that send chills up spines similarly.

Crackpots? You be the judge. I can understand predicting more economic troubles for America this year – it’s not like people are spending less and saving more on a wide scale. But these claims, including the collapse of the FDIC and martial law, sound incredibly far-fetched. I, personally, will believe it when I see it.

With Memorial Day behind us now, we might be ready to read about something other than our veterans and their contributions to our present state of being. I urge you, however, to read this article, written by a veteran, about what it means to be American and what our veterans fought to secure. It’s more the acknowledgment that we’re all human and we all deserve the same rights, but we seem to keep trying to deny rights to others. I’m guessing it’s all about power. When a group of people has more rights (or freedom) than another, it has a greater amount of power than the smaller group – maybe even power over that group. These things are not what America was meant to be.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with my life since I realized that my English degree isn’t going to get me anywhere that I want to go.  I don’t regret focusing my time on literature at all.  I love reading and thinking about what I’m reading.  I loved the vast majority of what I studied in college.

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.