When I Grow Up

My whole childhood I wanted to be a veterinarian.

I know, so overplayed in the young girl grow-up plan. But my best friend's dad was a vet, and I had the opportunity to have a lot of behind-the-scenes looks at what being a vet was all about.
My best friend and I took horseback lessons for a second, and I suddenly wanted to be a large animal vet.
I read All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot, and then wanted to be a country vet. (Never mind I grew up in Palm Springs where the country is hard to come by)
Then I wanted to be a wildlife rehabilitator and nurse birds and raccoons and stuff back to health and then release them into the wild. I think after seeing the puppet they use to feed baby condors at the zoo. Either that or a zoo vet. What 11 year old girl doesn't want to midwife tigers?
Years later when the college thing came up, I was going to attend College of the Siskeyous and be a biologist, a geneticist to be exact. Gregor Mendel being my personal hero as far as the sciences go. Visions of creating and identifying and separating filled my head.... mentalizing myself as a mad scientist. At one point I owned 62 pet rats and was trying to customize colors.

But life happened. Life happened hard.
So now I find myself struggling to self motivate to go back to school to get a nursing degree.
I want to work with NICU babies when I grow up now.