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Guided by prompts from WDC blogging challenges... and of course, life |
HI! I'm Jenn - and I'm all over the place (well, at least my mind is). In this blog, I have attempted to gather my thoughts on things prompted/inspired by WDC blogging challenges from "Journalistic Intentions"  , "The Soundtrack of Your Life" , "Blogging Circle of Friends " , "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" and, well, LIFE.    |
Day 3219: September 6, 2021 Prompt: Choices can change our lives profoundly. The choice to mend a broken relationship, to say "yes" to a difficult assignment, to lay aside some important work to play with a child, to visit some forgotten person--these small choices may affect many lives eternally. Gloria Gather - Tell us about a choice you made that changed your life. Every choice we make in life has the potential to change our lives profoundly, as well as the lives of those with which we interact. But, being human and therefore fallible, we all make some doozies in our lifetimes. I've had a few. The probably worst choice I have made to date affected mainly me, but in the long run has affected my parents, children, my husband, and even some of my friends throughout the years. As a teen, I suffered from undiagnosed Bipolar disorder. Most of the time, I was depressed to the point of not wanting to be alive with some times of feeling invincible surfacing once in a while. I was unhappy. When I considered everything I had to be grateful for, I became even more depressed because there were others that had life much worse than I. I couldn't find a reason to verify why I was so despondent. So one day, I took a bottle of muscle relaxers that a school mate had been prescribed for her back. The whole bottle. I went into seizures during theater class. Everyone saw it. I'm sure the teacher was scared to death. I woke up in the Emergency Room having my stomach pumped. It turned out that the choice I had made to end my life triggered my dormant genetic trait for Epilepsy. The choice to try to end my life just made it worse than I perceived it already was. My parents then had two kids with Epilepsy. Two kids' specialist bills to pay for, and the labs, medicines, etc. They had two of us they had to worry about day and night, never knowing if or when one of us would go into a grand mal seizure. I was teased at school after that, people pretending to have seizures and calling me a freak. I had a few more big ones at school too. It was always so embarrassing. The choice to take my life inadvertently affected my ability to get into the top universities I had been looking into, and the Naval Academy (they wanted me to be seizure free and medication free for at least a year before I would be allowed in - and that never happened). Little did I know then, it would affect me for the rest of my life. I had seizures when I got sick or too stressed, seizures during my monthlies. That choice affected jobs, the quality of life for me and my little family. I tried to hide my Epilepsy from new friends as long as possible. It always ended the same way, with them being witness to a seizure. I his it from my husband too. He found out in the middle of the night when I went into a pretty bad one. He took me to the hospital and when I came out of my post-seizure state and was finally coherent, we both found out I was pregnant. I had seizures while in labor with both of my girls. No amount of medication could keep them away. Then, my daughters had to grow up with a defective Mommy. But they became old hands at dealing with the effects of the seizures. There were a few times when the seizures were so bad they scared everyone. I'd wake up in the hospital with everyone I love taking turns sitting in my hospital room waiting for me to finally wake up. And the kicker, the Status Epilepticus. By the time that one hit, everyone was well used to what to do. When the seizure lasted longer than five minutes and then more came back to back, they knew I might not make it out of that one. I think it scared the bejeezus out of all of them! I don't know, I was incoherent. I think that choice made my life and the lives of my family much worse. All these years, decades later, I still wonder if I hadn't made the choice to try to end my life, how different my life would be. But, then again, I wouldn't be the person I am today. Word Count: 750 |
PROMPT September 6th Do you love your job/career? Tell us why you love it, and why did you choose this career and not something else. It wasn't my dream to be a teacher, in fact my mom warned against it, as she was unhappy in her teaching role. She taught English and history. Originally, because of my love of animals, I wanted to be a veterinarian. That fell through when I began college and discovered my new-found freedom. At seventeen, I learned that partying was way more fun than learning. I failed out during my second semester, even failed aerobics. Morning classes are difficult when you wake with a hangover daily. So, I dropped out of school and focused on my social life. Two kids and almost twenty years later, I decided I was tired of slinging pizzas and mowing lawns for a living so I enrolled back in school. My first degree was in computer programming and design. I was stoked when I graduated, ready to take the world by storm. I ended up using my degree to work a desk job that was far from enriching for a couple of years. Extremely unhappy with where I was, I decided to go back to school again, this time in Biology. Why the heck not? I have always loved science, been a bit of a nerd. (I totally rock being a nerd by the way, no better thing for me to be) The field of Biology is so wide that I had my choice of what my field of study within it would be. I took every Biology class I could. And Chemistry and Physics. I was in my realm! THIS is what I was supposed to be doing! I loved every biology class I took and was the first student to volunteer for collection of samples in the field. I was offered a research assistant position with one of my professors and jumped on it. I was chosen over a few others because of my experience with plants. I already knew how to clone, do controlled pollination, alter growth cycles. So, into the plant genetics research lab I went! I absolutely loved research, both in the field and in the lab. I had my own growth chambers for the experiments we performed. I was lead assistant. I presented our work at symposiums. I was even a co-author on our research article that was published in Nature Communications. I thought I had found my niche. But the prof. told me there’s not much of a living to be made in research biology unless I was teaching as well. I’d be better off teaching and researching on the side. I had a family to think of after all. When I graduated, I also got my certification to teach - all science for seventh grade through twelfth grade. Over the years, I had become someone who covers their bases as much as possible, so this certification was perfect. The certification test was a whopper. Imagine taking a final exam where everything you’ve learned in all of your Biology, Chemistry, and Physics classes was being tested. I began teaching shortly after graduating. My first gig was teaching Sophomore Chemistry, Senior Physics, and Forensic Science, which was an elective available to juniors and seniors. Oh Yeah! I found I absolutely loved teaching. I loved sharing my enthusiasm for science with a whole new generation of nerds – and those who were just forced to take the class for a credit. Teaching was so much fun, and worth the time I had to spend creating lesson plans and lab activities and grading papers. And it turns out, Forensic Science was the love I never knew I had. After that, I moved to another district and began teaching biology, chemistry, Forensic Science, and Theatre. (Wait! What? Theatre isn’t a science! True, but they needed someone to teach it and since part of my original degree was paid for on a Theatre scholarship, my boss thought I fit the bill just fine. Okay… There are stories I can tell you about that gig, but they’ll have to wait for another day.) A few years there and I found a job at a private Christian school. I would be the main science teacher for all middle and high school classes, and I was encouraged to include Creationism into my life science lessons. (It works by the way, the theories of Evolution and Creationism can both work together to explain just how we got to where we are today. They aren’t as opposing ideas as most would have you believe. This, again, could be another entry for a different day.) My day was full. I taught physical science, life science, integrated physics and chemistry, anatomy and physiology, biology, physics, chemistry, and of course my new-found love, forensic science. These were the best years of my working life! The students became like my own kids. I shared in their successes and failures. I was there when someone needed advice and when someone just needed an ear to listen. I saw many students grow through the years, graduate, and become contributing members of society. Many of them friended or followed me on social media platforms like Facebook. Some of them became friends after they graduated. But all good things must come to an end, right? My illnesses took a hard turn south about a year and a half ago and I was hospitalized. Luckily for me, my hospitalization coincided with the arrival of the pandemic to our area and the lockdown that followed. So I was able to teach remotely from my hospital bed. I even used my dialysis as an opportunity for my Anatomy and Physiology students to see what it was all about, live streaming one of my dialysis/transfusion sessions just for them. Make the most out of every situation, right?! My students and even some of my former students sent well wishes to me in the hospital through the internet. Sent cards via a co-worker. But that was the last year of my teaching. The pandemic and my illnesses made sure of that. Sometimes though, I will happen across one of my former students on those rare occasions that I go into town. Some have told me that I was their favorite teacher. Many have told me they didn’t like science until they took my class, that I made it fun and interesting. And that is why I started and continued teaching. For the love of Science and for the love of the kids. Encouraging the nerds of the next generation. Word Count: 1101 |
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You're so right, they are definitely perceptive. They know when you need extra attention, and they know when to keep an eye out for you. They are definitely a blessing from God.
