On Being Accepted

A little over three months ago, I turned in my application to the RN program at Pasadena City College. Remember that?

On Wednesday, I received notification that I'd been accepted.

I've come this far.

I feel very, very blessed. Even though I did work hard in my classes and I earned straight As, there were lots of other people who worked even harder than I did. (Of course, those people have more time than I do.) Most, but not all, of the people I go to school with have only school as their main focus in life right now. I, of course, have to juggle a whole lot of other things. I have limited time to actually leave my house and attend classes. I have limited time as to when I can study. But I have to say, that like the loaves and fishes talked about in the New Testament, when we give all we have to give to the Lord, He makes it more than enough.

Going to college in California right now is not easy. There's a lot of unrest in the college system because of budget concerns. Hundreds and hundreds of classes have been cancelled, more each semester, and now most community colleges are dropping their summer and winter intersessions. Pasadena has been flooded with students from other schools trying to get into needed classes, and there's not enough room. Registration for classes is on a priority basis, and based on the number of credits I have, I haven't been at the top of that list.

And yet.

And yet, I was able to get in to every class not only that I needed, but when I needed it with my schedule. Other students tell me how impossible that is, how they'd been trying for several semesters to get into a Physiology class or a Microbiology class. Micro, in fact, was my closest call. By the time I was able to register, the class was full and I was wait listed. I showed up to the first day of class and there were about twenty of us on the wait list, wanting to add. The professor told us she would call roll at the end of class and however many enrolled students didn't show up, that's how many new names she would add in their place. I sat through that class, in the front row, praying and sweating it out. At the end, there were two available spots. Two! By school rules, she had to draw names for those two spots. My name was the second one drawn.

When it came time to submit applications to nursing programs, I only applied to PCC. Other people thought that was risky. Most people submit to four or five different programs, but I just felt like PCC was where I was supposed to be. Even though the odds were stacked against me. There were between 600-700 applications for 60 available openings.

I suppose my testimony in this whole thing is that when we follow the promptings of the Lord, a way will be provided for us. It doesn't so much matter how difficult the science classes are when you never thought of yourself as a science person. It doesn't matter how full the classes are, or how unlikely the odds are. That day, two and a half years ago, when I had the impression that I should enroll in college again and pursue a nursing degree, it was one of the clearest, most precise impressions I've ever had. And the only real thing I take credit for was the fact that I followed it. From that point on, I've never been doing this on my own. And I am very humbled that with His help, I have done what I thought I could not do. Now we move on to the next step.

The Nursing Program!