Wednesday, May 6, 2009

100 days

With just 100 days to go, I find myself itching to get started. Most of my preparation is complete; now I'm just waiting on other people (like the financial aid office). My big concern these days is financial.

I work as a full-time poker dealer in Black Hawk, a small mining town 45 minutes west of Denver that in 1991 brought in legalized gambling in order to preserve the historic aspects of a town that was pretty much falling apart. Because my wife worked part-time this year, and because we are homeowners with a baby, I need to work full-time through the summer and then continuously through the school year. My hope is that at some point I'll be able to quit the casino job and start doing a pharmacy internship, but I can't wait for that to fall in my lap, so for the time being I need to find a part-time schedule that works with my classes.

In November, the voters of Colorado approved an increase in our gaming limits, along with 24-hour operation and the addition of craps and roulette. These changes take effect July 2, which means new schedules for everyone. They released the list of schedules this week, so I'm spending most of my time figuring out which schedules will work for me. The problem is that I want to work full-time for six weeks and then drop down to 25 hours in the middle of August. Officially, this can't be done, but I'm working on some clever ways around the rules.

But really I just wish the next 100 days would be over, so I could stop worrying about and planning the future and start living it! Well, we'll see how it all works out. It depends on some other things, too, like how much financial aid I can get and what kind of job my wife ends up with. I guess 100 days is not that long. As someone on facebook pointed out, it's only 0.273 years!

3 comments:

CB said...

In my experience, I've found that everything works out in the end. It sucks getting to that point, blinded by all the "what-ifs" and panic that kicks in. When I took my tour of campus, the gal doing the tour said, they are amazing with fiances and will make it work. I'm sort of relieved that someone else is working because when someone asked on the FB community if anyone else was ready to quit their job and everyone chimed in...all I could think was I need to get a part time job (hopefully on campus or as an intern ASAP) to help the hubs make ends meet. GAH! I'm so excited. I have a love/hate relationship with your countdown. ;)

CB said...

::sigh:: I should drink more coffee before I'm allowed to make blog comments. I need like a breathalyzer device that checks for adequate caffeine levels before I click "submit". Oy

Thomas Vaeth said...

Nice blog. I am actually working on a blog about my experience on applying to pharmacy schools. I hope to use it as a guide for others and maybe a little extra something for my PharmCAS application.