Early in life, I wanted to be a veterinarian.\u00a0 I volunteered at a veterinary clinic on Saturdays while I was in high school.\u00a0 I studied pre-veterinary medicine at Ohio State (for a year).\u00a0 I got discouraged when I earned a “D” in College Algebra and College Chemistry.\u00a0 I thought that was the end of the line for me.\u00a0 I began searching for other paths in life.<\/p>\n
Years later, I realized I could have used Ohio State’s forgiveness rule and retaken those classes.\u00a0 That first year was hard for me.\u00a0 I’d never had to learn how to study before, but at Ohio State, by the end of that first year, I knew how to study.\u00a0 Too bad I dropped out.\u00a0 The path I eventually took worked out fine, but for years I wondered how things would have been if I’d stuck with it — even if I’d changed my major.\u00a0 I missed having the “traditional” college experience for the entire time.<\/p>\n
Instead, I worked at a minimum wage job making toy drums for nine months.\u00a0 Then I enlisted in the Air Force, where eventually earned three associates’ degrees, a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree.\u00a0 I completed significant post-Master’s work but did not finish an Educational Specialist degree.\u00a0 I had a 28-year career, with a little more than half of it as a commissioned officer.\u00a0 When I retired, I was able to retire.\u00a0 At age 48.\u00a0 Something I never in a million years I would have dreamed possible when I enlisted.<\/p>\n
So, I don’t regret the path my life took.\u00a0 Any stories you care to share about unexpected paths to where you are today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Early in life, I wanted to be a veterinarian.\u00a0 I volunteered at a veterinary clinic on Saturdays while I was in high school.\u00a0 I studied pre-veterinary medicine at Ohio State (for a year).\u00a0 I got discouraged when I earned a “D” in College Algebra and College Chemistry.\u00a0 I thought that …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-z-challenge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}