Monday, January 14, 2013

I've Changed Majors to Applied Behavioral Science


       But first, about 7 years ago, at a rummage sale for about $20.00, I picked up a nice old 4-leaf oak dining room table.  Well-used but still in decent shape. Its purpose was going to be to provide a frame for a ping-pong table.  It worked real well in that capacity for a couple of years and then we moved here.  Since then I've been using it to feed dinner to an occasional 12-15 member Mennonite family.  Now I've got the ping-pong table screwed back on its top in the dining room and my daughter is getting pretty good at it. If I can get her to just let me leave it attached to the table for the winter, we could seat 6 additional people.


Current shot (1/15/13) with door and windows waiting for me to put trim on

     I've changed majors from Nursing to Applied Behavioral Science.  I have 70 total college credits by now (64 transferable) to apply to the BS program.  If all goes well, I will be doing my clinical work 20 minutes away at the Lincoln Hills School for Boys in Irma WI in about a year and a half.  The nursing training I've been involved in for the past 3 years has been invaluable.  But now its on to obtaining a BS degree online at 100 year old Ashford University in Iowa, toward the field of psychological counseling.  The decision has a lot to do with "mind over matter" (so to speak).  The "psychological" over the "physical".  Not that quality nursing is not equally demanding mentally, but it simply involves a different set of skills, and a different aptitude in a different setting than does life counseling.  Counseling is more of a "solo" sport - so to speak.

4 comments:

Carol B. said...

Very interesting Todd! You just never stop with your motivation and I so admire you for that. You have done wel with your house, it looks beautiful. I have been thinking of you and how your nursing went, so decided best to check your web site!

Todd Saunders said...

Hi Carol,

Thanks.

Nursing went well, a good primer for what I'm going into now. Getting into the area of psychology will be a little more like it was getting into the area of horseshoeing - I have had lifelong experience in both areas - and that helps. I already have large areas in my mental hard-drive built and ready to go in the area of psychology.

I'm not sure I could have been the kind of nurse I wanted and needed to be. The kind of day to day stress in that "clinical" setting was doing some wild things to my adrenal glands, and it was starting to work me over. It would probably be different if I was 30 years old. At this point in my life I'm o.k. admitting that it was too stressful. I would get the smallest thing wrong in my "live" skills tests and my stress hormones would go through the roof. I don't like to get things wrong. So I better face my frailties. My grades, overall, were at the top of the class. That is what I needed to see if I could still do. So I'm very much looking forward to getting back into what had originally been my greatest area of interest in school - psychology.

As for you, I envy your Ipad more and more all the time. I appreciate my Iphone. I use it wherever I go all day long as a bible concordance, a dictionary, a German language dictionary, map, weather station, email, news, langauge apps, my Ashford University app. I don't really text at all but I answer texts if they are about scheduling. I prefer to call and talk instead of text. I have one Christian buddy who I met online during the christian blogwars (probably still going on), whom I enjoy keeping up with on facebook, once every week or two at the most. But the Iphone itself has become for me a wonderful tool apart from social media. And I wish they would put out a mini Ipad with a phone in it.

I hope you and your husband, and children, are all doing well. Glad you dropped by. I'll talk to you again.

Todd

Bhedr said...

Interesting. I hope it all works well for you.

Todd Saunders said...

It'll be a challenge, and a much needed stretch. Thanks Brian.