Back to School

Today was my last day of break. Waaahhhh!

Really, though, I'm pretty lucky. I've been off since December 17th. That's not a bad deal. I'm excited about my new classes too. And I only have one day of classes before 11 AM. AND one of my classes doesn't start until the last week of January so I still get two days off for a few more weeks. Teaching at a college is pretty awesome. It's like being a student, but better because I'm getting paid.

The other cool thing is that since I usually don't have morning classes, I'll have plenty of time for all of my monitoring appointments in a few weeks. Bonus - there is a satellite office less than a mile from my campus so on class days I can go to that office for the basic monitoring appointments.

Not much else to report IF-wise. We're still waiting to hear back about Seth's infectious disease and genetic testing, but I don't anticipate any problems with that. I've already had some basic genetic testing and I'm not a carrier for anything so unless he's got something really rare, we'll probably be okay.

On Saturday, I received a call telling me that my drugs were ready to be picked up. It was quite a bit more than I expected because instead of just using Gonal-F (for which I have a 50% discount), I'll also be taking Menopur which ends up being more than half the total bill. Oh well. If this is what Dr. M thinks will give us the best shot, then this is what we'll do. Wednesday is my day off so I'm going to head back to the pharmacy to pick everything up so that it's ready for when I start Lupron on Saturday. I'm excited to stock my IVF station!

For now, I'm on day 8 of BCPs and it's been pretty uneventful. I think that's the way it's supposed to be so I'm good with that.

Beauty School Dropout

Well, no. Not really. Not at all, actually. I just have that song from Grease stuck in my head because today I officially dropped out of the Ph.D. program. My contract isn't up until the end of August, but I had a meeting with my committee today to discuss my progress and future goals and I told them that I would not be coming back in the fall.

It was a really difficult decision. I thought about it for a very long time. During my second semester, I took a leave of absence because I was already having second thoughts about the path I was on. See, after I got my Master of Science degree I switched specialties. I was still in the same general field, but it was more or less an entirely different topic. It seemed like a good idea in terms of gaining new experience and being qualified for a wider range of jobs, but I just could not get interested in my work. Sometimes I'd be working in the lab or having a meeting with my advisor and I'd think "This is not my life. This is not really happening.". I could hear myself having conversations about my research but I'd still be thinking "What the fuck am I talking about and WHY?". It's been kind of a mess.

Even though I've known that I was really unhappy and entirely unmotivated to do this kind of work, it was still difficult to give up. I felt like a failure. I felt like a quitter. I worried that I would regret it and be ashamed of myself some day. I was afraid people would think that I didn't finish the degree because I wasn't smart enough or because I was lazy. Then I realized - I don't give a shit about what about other people think. I mean, I want people to think I'm a good person, but beyond that I don't care what they think of me. Especially not people who would look down on me for making this choice.

Today, I'm proud of myself. And relived - gosh, I am so relieved to be done with this! I have no idea what I'm going to do now (and it was obvious that some people thought I was crazy for that) and I have no idea if I'm going to be happier, but at least I took a chance. I feel very lucky to have the option to move on and try something else. Not everyone has the choice to do whatever they want and I don't take that for granted. So maybe I have to start all over. Maybe I'm nowhere near having that sweet job I always hoped for. But I think I'm finally headed in the right direction. Maybe the only way to move forward is to first go back the way I came.