Soldiering On

I'm making some progress on this planning thing. Spoke to the advisor today. He was actually quite nice. He was very monotone, almost dismissive, to begin with, but he became guardedly optimistic and engaged when I pulled out spreadsheets of all my grand plans. He told me that it would be very difficult to work full time while going to school as a pre-med. He said he could count in one hand the number of nurses who worked while taking the classes needed to be a competitive applicant. I understand that. I knew what I was getting into. I know that I eventually have to quit. I just don't want to right now because:

• I am contracted for another year and a half. A break in the contract will require paying the hospital a lot of money.
• I'm not sure I can weather the loss of income at this time. 
• I will not only give up the best nursing job I have ever had, I will also surrender free tuition in addition to opportunities to be around cutting edge medicine, world-class physicians, relevant research, volunteering/community service connections, and so many other things that I love AND will benefit my future medical school application. 

I don't know what to do except keep trudging on. I keep hearing how hard future science classes are going to be. My confidence is starting to waver. Am I wasting my time? 

Other things we covered include the fact that I am currently in a college instead of a university. He echoed what we read in SDN far too often: University > College. I don't know why the concept of going to one is so difficult to swallow. I've been putting it off for years now. Am I scared that I'm not good enough for universities? Is that it? It's strange that I love working in these massive quaternary academic hospital, but I dislike setting foot in big universities.

Well, I have to do it. He thinks I should do it sooner rather than later. I agree, specially since the biggest factor, i.e., money, is hardly a deterrent now that work is paying for my tuition. I guess it's time to get over my phobia of giant educational institutions.

He gave me some constructive advice on my timeframe. By his calculations, I should be able to take the MCAT in late 2016/early 2017. That's much sooner than any of my calculations have shown. It was all a matter of pushing Calculus till later in the timeframe and focusing, instead, on the prerequisite sciences. He told me not to even take Calculus II since I'm already doing Statistics this semester. That works just fine for me. 

I guess there's nothing else to do but keep at it. He did exactly what I wanted me to do: gave me feedback and useful, concrete advice. Now off to class, I go.