Staking Our Claim: A Novel

There is a great scene in Far and Away starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise near the very end where together they throw a flagged stake in the ground, their eyes locked and determined on the unseen, yet endlessly unfolding future, claiming their land as others race past them on thundering horses in search of their own piece of Oklahoma territory. It's an inspiring scene in many respects, and one which makes me often ponder where our stake will be planted in the future. More appropriately compared though, is the moment just prior to this scene, where hundreds of land hungry hopefuls stand horse to horse, wagon to wagon, waiting for the gun to sound so they can race off into the wide world and stake their claim. The anticipation is palpable, the hope visible on each face. Ryan and I are at a very similar place physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Ryan and I have been married for 4.5 years and have loved every minute of it. About a month after we got hitched, Ryan got a job at UVRMC in housekeeping. It has a 6 month commitment before you can move departments, and he hoped that he would be able to serve his time and move up into something different. About a month following that, I got a job at the Target Portrait Studio. It was a decent job, but I didn't love it. I only lasted there a few months before I decided that I wanted to find something different. This was in part because I really wasn't enjoying it, and partly because I had to work on Sundays - and though there are many jobs where working on Sundays is inevitable, the portrait studio was not one of them. They paid me, or whoever the unlucky soul who happened to be working, more in one 4 hour shift on any given Sunday than they ever made. Once in a while a shopper would pass by and decide on the spur of the moment to get their kid's picture taken, but this was very rare. So I quit. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the most wise decision since I didn't have another job offer at the time, but I did it anyway. Thankfully I was teaching piano on the side, so I wasn't totally incomeless. I quit in December, the same month I graduated from UVU with my Bachelors in English - Creative Writing. I, like all graduates, had a feeling that somehow just by graduating, that I should automatically be worthy of some great high-income job. Hahahaha. Deep down inside, however, I knew this was false. Actually, it wasn't even "deep" down. I always knew it. I understood when I first enrolled at UVU that I had the unfortunately lot of deciding between three equally "worthless" degrees: Music, Dance, and English - the three loves of my life. My disclaimer, of course, is that I know there are plenty of people that have been successful with these degrees behind their names, but I knew that I was pursuing an education, not necessarily a career. I love music, but I knew I would never be a professional singer, pianist, or songwriter. And dance - sigh - oh how I love dance! But I knew I would never be a professional dancer or studio owner. Truthfully, I would love to simply be a choreographer - but due to my body deciding much earlier than my spirit that I couldn't keep up with the rigors of a dance degree, I decided that wasn't the best option either. English it was. It had always felt right, but you have to at least think it through, right? The goal? I want to be a writer! I want to write books! And that is something I could at least work towards while being a mom and working a "real" job if needs be. So I jumped in. The program was awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But post graduation, the simple reality came round again - there was no amazing high-income job waiting to make me a success. I would have to find that elsewhere.
I spent about 3.5 months "unemployed" beyond my piano students until one day I received a call to interview at UVRMC as an ER Registrar. The position was on call, but I was pretty excited about it none the less. Thankfully, I was offered the job and was hired at an amazing time when they had so many needs to be filled that I jumped from on call to full time within a couple of months. The job is a blast and I have loved every minute of it. I have seen the most amazing things - from the heart breakingly horrific to the side-splitting hilarious and everything in between. As of last year I was offered the position of Office Coordinator for the ER registration group. I now work in the Administrative Offices for 30 of the 36 hours a week working on the schedule, calling on returned mail, keeping up on reports, going over every demographic form that comes through the ER and checking for errors, and doing payroll. I am constantly learning and growing. It has been fabulous! I have the most amazing boss in the world who would do just about anything for you. I love her! I still work one 6 hour shift out on the floor to make sure I am still up to date on everything, which I love. My co-workers are incredible and I love being with them. I have been working in the ER now for almost 4 years. I am still teaching 13 piano students on my days off, and occasionally substitute teach dance classes. Life is full and wonderful.Ryan served his 6 months in housekeeping and then was able to secure a job as an Anesthesia Tech in the OR. He has been there ever since. It is an incredible job which he has really excelled at. If I think I see amazing things in the ER - oh the things he sees in the OR! He works with an incredible team of doctors, nurses, techs, and the likes. The training consisted of several months worth of on-job training before being considered able to take call and be on your own. Ryan passed with flying colors and often trains others as they come into the job. There is so much you have to know for the job. It's incredible. Every doctor wants their IVs and bags set up differently, their medications placed in a specific place, the equipment set out just right. I don't know how they ever keep it straight. Ryan is responsible to set up for the cases as well as assist in pumping blood, holding body parts where they belong, know where everything is supposed to be and be able to dash to get it at any point. He was named Employee of the Year from the OR a few years ago. I am always impressed with how hard he works and how he puts his all into everything he does. Pre-mission Ryan was a business major, but when he came home, he felt that medicine was where he belonged. He decided early on that he did not want to be a Biology of Chemistry major because he wanted a little variety and a wider scope. The answer? Community and Public Health. This meant that he would have to do all the pre-med classes on the side, which is pretty much at least a minor's worth of classes. But he plugged along faithfully taking full time classes each semester and working part time (24-35 hours) a week. The goal has always been med school. It's what he has wanted from the moment he got home from his mission. Things were going great too... until about a year ago. I believe all that Ryan had left to finish his pre-med classes was the second half of organic chemistry. The problem, we discovered, was that it was only offered in the afternoon 4/5 days of the week and Ryan works 3/5 days of the week - all in the afternoon. It's not possible for him to rearrange his schedule at work, and there was nothing we could do about the class selection at UVU. So we looked at other possibilities. We tried Salt Lake Community College hoping that he could go in the summer. They did offer the class, but it was only offered in Taylorsville, again 4/5 days a week during the day, and at this point Ryan had an internship at the Health Department in Provo during the day, and work in the afternoon. So there went that idea. We couldn't get into BYU for the summer semester that year because it was well past application acceptance. None of the technical schools like Stevens Heneger or Provo College offered the course. So we turned to online options. After much searching, I found that Oregon State University offered the course online - the exact same as the on campus class. Ryan would need to take the lab at UVU obviously, but it seemed we had the answer. That is, until we found that UVU doesn't accept Oregon's credits. (Well they do, but it would have transferred as a much lower science credit and that helps no one.) Our last resort was BYU the summer semester following graduation from UVU. But we learned that at that point he would have to apply to BYU as a post-bach instead of a visiting student (since technically he would be graduated by then,) and that pretty much slices our chances of being accepted for even that one class to nothing.

At this point we had to ask ourselves two questions:
1. Is this a rock Heavenly Father has placed in our path that we are meant to overcome and make us stronger? Or
2. Is this a rock Heavenly Father has placed in our path to help guide us a different direction?
It was one we couldn't, or wouldn't answer for a while. It was heart breaking to even think of - working 4+ years towards something, to be within months of reaching it, only to have it drift farther away. And all because of one class! But over the summer as Ryan became more involved in his internship with the Environmental Health Dept, life and light began creeping back into his eyes. Then one day, about a month into fall semester, he began talking about graduate school. And not just talking about it - he had begun researching. He had already found several programs he liked and sent me link after link for Public Health and Health Administration. He was really getting excited! We realized we had an immediate decision to make. If we hurried, Ryan could take the GRE and we could apply for schools right away. Most applications are due at the very beginning of January. That meant we could be going away to school within a year! The prospect was both terrifying and thrilling. (The chances of us staying in Utah for grad school are pretty slim because only a few schools offer the programs we are looking and I haven't loved any of them. I think Weber or West Minister, can't remember which one, is the only one that I would say maybe to, but there are so many incredible schools out of state!)

After a week or two of anxiety trying to decide, we felt that now was not the time. Ryan is hoping to find a job in a related field to gain some more experience. He feels that if he can find the right job, and if the opportunity presents itself, he may just be able to work his way up the chain of command as many do in the field. But if not, maybe grad school fall 2012. I have no fear is saying that this is a reasonable goal because no, the world is not going to end in 2012.

Ryan officially graduated from UVU in Dec with his Bachelors in Community and Public Health and a minor in Health Education. (And an unofficial minor in science stuff.) Yeah!!! I am so proud of him! Sure, our path isn't as clear as we had hoped it would be at this point, but we don't fear it. It's hard for me personally to not know which direction we are heading, but I also don't worry about it. I know that things will work out the way they are supposed to. In the mean time, we are both still working and loving life. Ryan is looking for jobs and still collecting information on schools. If he can find a job, awesome! We will see where it takes us. If not, awesome! We will throw more effort into finding that perfect school. But for now, we are just happy to be here, relieved that school is done for a little bit, and enjoying life's adventures as they come along. We are blessed to have both families close, so we are really enjoying the time that we are able to spend with them, especially knowing that may not always be the case, but we will see.

I am really looking forward to the moment when our own personal race clock gun will sound and we can bolt of onto the next phase of life. It's hard to imagine life ever changing from what it's been for the last 4 years, but it will, and as much as I love things exactly the way they are, I know change will be great too.
And now if you have made it through this incredibly long blog, you deserve a reward. Go stretch and eat some of your favorite treats, maybe some chocolate or some gummies. ;) The simple fact is this: I know I could have written this entire thing in maybe a paragraph or two and you really wouldn't have missed out on much. But I am a writer, I am a woman, and I love to talk.