UNIT 5 "A Mind is a terrible thing to waste"

I normally choose to freewrite however, I think that I can speak on two of the topics that were given in the Blog section.
If there was one thing about your academic challenges, what would it be? What I find to be the most challenging academically is not being able to have that degree right here right now. It takes so much just to receive it, alot of work alot of discipline and if your like me, meaning that you didnt go to school right after high school it even harder. Now you find yourself having to work a full time job and trying to manage school. It becomes so exhausting, but I never find myself giving up because I am determined. I want to prove to myself that I can do it, that I will have a Bachelor degree. Unfortunantley it may not be in Nursing but it will be in Health Care Administration. It's the closest I could get being on active duty. There is no way I could have dont Nursing being on active duty and I wasnt ready to let the Navy go to go to school. So I will finish out my time until retirement and I will have my degree before then. Now I could have went for a Commissioning Program and let the Navy pay for it but they want you to pay back 10 more years and I just couldnt see doing that.
How is school influencing your life at or up to this point? I believe that ever since I saw my dad graduate from school when I was a little girl, I knew then that I wanted to be in his shoes. Since then I have managed to graduated from high school. I then entered the Navy but my education didnt stop there. After about a year I started attending College to to knock out my prerequsites. I then had enough credit where I was able to receive my Associates in Liberal Science. After that it was like I was hungry for more, that wasnt enough. So then I started taking classes here an there to get me prepared for the Nursing field i.e. Anatomy & Physiology I and II and Medical Terminology, Chemistry. Then I came to a fork in the road an I needed to make a descion. I had hit my 10 year mark in the Navy, and they say that if you make it to 10 that you might as well stay. Well I started making all preparations to get out because I didnt want to do it anymore. So I then went to Medical Assisting school and became certified 12 months later, just to have something to fall back on, however then something changed and I decided to stay Navy and finish out my time to retirement, why not right? This is when I came to the conclusion that I could not do Nursing on active duty but I didnt want to give up, and that leads me to where I am today. I keep pushing because I want it. I keep pushing because the Navy is paying for it, and they want to drain everything out of me so why not take what I can from them. So with that being said school has been a major part of me. I feel incomplete if I am not taking a class, dont get me wrong a break from school is great but I always feel like I am missing out on something if I am not constantly learning and being taught new things. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste"