36 Days

I have this thing I do. I make the titles of my blog posts out of song titles or lyrics. I'll start out with an idea of what I'm going to write about, then try to think of a song that captures it.

This post is about how long it is until I go back to school. I started thinking about songs to fit the theme of a set amount of time. The first one I came up with was 36 Days, an old school Hawk Nelson song that I like to cover on voice and keyboard. I opened up iCal and counted the days one by one. It's exactly 36 days until the eve of the first day of classes. 36 Days from now, I'll be curled up in my bed in my familiar apartment dorm room, my sheets freshly washed, my class schedule on the wall, my clothes probably not yet fully unpacked. Ready to hurl myself headlong into what will hopefully be my final year of undergrad. 36 Days it is.

It's going to be a good year. I know this. I'm extremely excited, because this year is going to be unlike any year to come before it. Sure, I'll be surrounded by my apartment bros again, a group of guys who I can get down with and who have my back no matter what. Sure, I'll be free of the crushing weight of being around my family for long periods of time, able to act like a responsible and independent adult capable of making his own decisions. Sure, I'll have a better body and more motivation to improve it, due to my newfound addictions to healthy eating, and to picking things up and putting them down. But these things aren't what will truly set this year apart. This year is different because I have a goal.

I've never really had a goal in my life, I mean really had a goal. There have been times when I've set goals like "high marks" or "better social life", but those aren't all-encompassing goals by which I could govern my entire set of behaviors. I'll bet you're wondering what this goal of mine is. Here it is: I'm going to dental school, bitches.

Did that come out of nowhere? It did for me too. I was sitting down in my room one day, and Dad came in asking me if I was studying for anything this summer.
I asked if there was anything in particular he wanted me to be studying for.
He replied that I was really wandering around with my career choice. I wanted to be a doctor, but then not so much, or maybe I should study more genetics because that's kind of cool, or maybe not, or maybe I should just finish my degree and see what comes up, or maybe not, but not really doing anything. He said in 10 years, I might look back and kick myself, wishing that I had just done something and gone somewhere.
I said maybe you're right, but what should I do?
He said he never wants to tell me what to do, and supports whatever reasonable choice I make, but he recommends I be a dentist like him. He said I'd be very good at it, and I would enjoy it. It's much easier than being a doctor and you make more money.
I said something about it not being all about money.
He asked me to guess how much he pays the first year dentist that works 2 days a week at his office.
I don't know dad, how much?
$5000 a month. Not bad hey? That could be you in 5 years. Working 4 days a week, making 120 grand a year.

It was the money part that really hooked me. It was like he looked inside my head and pulled out a set of words that I'd been struggling to form, or maybe looking for permission to think. This is them, paraphrased:

"There are things you want to do with your life, right? You like traveling. You like hockey and music and concerts and wakeboarding and all that stuff. Well, there are a select few types of training that will allow you to make enough money to buy those things, and give you time to enjoy them. Dentistry has been really good to me, and I really think it would be good to you too."

This was paradigm shifting. All your life, you're told to do something you love, and you'll never work a day in your life. What a load of shit. No one is going to pay me to do the things I love. It's just not going to happen, that's not the way the real world works. The best case scenario is getting paid for something I like and that I'm good at, and using that to get the things I love. From a practical and realist worldview, dentistry is a perfect fit.

Now, I'm indescribably excited. I've got motivation to study my ass off. The GPA benchmark I've got to hit is 3.8, the median GPA of accepted dental students at U of A last year. My GPA right now is 3.7. Even if I'm not able to pull it up and get into U of A, it's more than good enough to get into a whole bunch of American schools. I'm legitimately shooting for 4.0 this year. It will take some sacrifices, but I'll be the first to admit that I slacked off for long periods these past two years in Biology. Now that I have my goal, I'll stay focussed in every class. I'll do every reading, and study my class notes for an hour or two every day. This is totally, completely doable, and I'm going to prove it.

Best of all, now that my goal has given me an exact framework of how hard I have to work at school, whatever is left over is truly my own. I can let loose on friday and saturday nights totally uninhibited by guilt or anything else. As long as I've got my goal well covered, I can fill in the cracks with whatever I want. I don't have to worry about undergrad degree requirements of independent research projects or anything like that. I can take dental prereq's, other cool shit that I like, and peace out to University of Southern California next fall. How unbelievably fucking awesome is that?!?

36 days until this all starts going down.