The Meeting

After I found out I was accepted to Missouri State University, there were a couple of things I had to do online, such as watch a video about being a new student, sign up for an email account through MSU's site...just a few things like that.  Once that was finished, the next step was to set up an appointment with an adviser in the education department.  I called and got my appointment all set, and the next thing I knew it was time to go visit my adviser.

I felt so silly, but I was very excited about meeting with my adviser!  I had already found out that 72 of my credit hours transferred to MSU, so I was pretty happy about that.  My appointment was set for 10:30 AM, and I dropped Derek off at preschool at 9:00 AM and headed straight to Springfield.  As I was driving I came to the realization that I should have made the appointment for a later time.  I had to get to the school, figure out where to park and where the building was on the campus.  I pulled in a parking lot at MSU at 10:15.  Not good, not good at all!  I had brought a lot of change for the parking meters, and I quickly parked and put a quarter in the meter.  Nothing happened.  I looked closely at the meter and realized it was out of order.

"Great," I thought, "This is not good.  If I leave the car here, they'll probably think I parked here on purpose so I wouldn't have to pay for a parking meter, which isn't true, but how will they know that?"

I decided I better move one parking space over, so I very quickly hopped back into the car, and moved over one space.  Then I put a quarter into that meter.  It worked, and gave me only 11 minutes of time, or something crazy like that!  I had no idea how long the meeting was going to take, so I put every drop of change I had into that silly parking meter and ended up with a little over two hours.  I quickly looked at the map in front of the parking lot and saw that the building I needed to get to was very far away.  I glanced at my watch.  I had nine minutes.  I didn't think that seemed very good.

I started walking as fast as I could in the direction that I thought the building should be.  Oh, I forgot to mention that it was also raining and very windy that morning, so my umbrella kept blowing up and pulling me this direction and that direction.  The whole time I was walking, I prayed and asked God to help me make it where I needed to be on time.  I didn't think I would make a very good impression being late, but there wasn't much I could do at this point.

After much brisk walking I saw the building.  I ran up the steps, walked through the door and headed to the left.  Praise the Lord, there was the office number where I was supposed to be right in front of me.  I glanced at my cell phone and saw that it said exactly 10:30.  Amazing!  I walked in, and almost laughed when the secretary said, "You must be Nikki Storment and I see you're right on time."  If she had only known, but she didn't, so I just smiled and said hello.

The secretary introduced me to my adviser, and I stepped into her office.  Missouri State University has a lot of students, I think around 11,000, so I understand that advisers see a lot of people each day, and that some are more serious about their education than others.  However, as I began talking to my adviser, I came to the realization that she didn't really think I was very committed to going back to school.  Or maybe it wasn't that she thought that, but she just wasn't sure if I was really serious about going back to school, that maybe I was just there on some sort of a whim.  I had an impulse to say, "Listen, I have a husband and five kids at home.  I have a lot of things I could be doing other than sitting here in this chair right now, and I can guarantee you if I wasn't serious about going back to school and finishing my degree, there is no way that I would be here!"

But, I didn't say that.  Now, I used to be a pretty good student, and as she began telling me about this advanced program they offer some students, I told her I might be interested in doing that.  She looked at me and said, "You have to get approval to go that direction, and you have to maintain at least a 2.75 GPA."

When I didn't bat an eye, she suggested we look at my transcript from Emporia State University, where I have 71 college hours.  When she saw that my GPA at Emporia was 3.74, the whole climate of the meeting changed, and she said, "OK, I think that might be a possibility for you."  From that point on the meeting seemed to go better.  I guess seeing that proved to her that I was a serious student, and that I just wasn't going through some kind of mid-life crisis or something like that.

The next thing she told me was that I had to take a College Base Test on June 16 (Yes, of this year!), which is a test the State of Missouri requires for teachers.  It's a four hour test over Writing, English, Math, Social Studies and Science.  In the words of another elementary education major that I talked to, "It's like the ACT test on steroids."

After that she proceeded to explain to me that all my credit hours had transferred, but not all towards an elementary education degree at Missouri State University.  Then she showed me a list of all the hours I still needed to take, and when I asked her how long she thought it would take for me to finish, she replied, "Three years, at the earliest."

All in all, the meeting left me feeling like I just might cry.  I really didn't like the ACT test, and I haven't taken any sort of test like that, well, since high school.  And, the three year thing didn't strike me as that great of news either.  On a positive note, she said that I could get some of the classes reevaluated to see if I might be able to use some of them for classes towards my degree (Praise the Lord! I have done that, and four more of my classes from Emporia State did get approved towards my degree, so that is wonderful.).  The meeting ended on a very positive note, and she has been a great help to me since that meeting, but when I left I wasn't really feeling that great!  I actually was feeling pretty discouraged and a bit overwhelmed.

When I got back out to my car, I sat there, just digesting all that I had learned.  The Lord is just so funny.  He truly has the best sense of humor of anyone.  He does.  Lots of thoughts were spinning in my head, one of them being, "Well!  Three years at the earliest!  This just makes it seem like all my time at Emporia was just a waste of time!"

And, the Lord replied (not out loud, but that still, small voice inside), "Yeah, because before you were planning to go back to school, it wasn't a waste that you spent two years at Emporia!"

Ha!  God can really put things into perspective, you know what I mean?  That made me laugh because it was just so true!  I mean, I already went to school at Emporia.  I already had those hours and I already had taken those courses.  And, whether I ever went back to school or not, that was already done!  Isn't it funny how we sometimes get upset about things that really don't make any sense at all?  Because, either way, I already spent those two years at Emporia, so even if none of my hours counted towards my degree, that is already done.  Funny!

The next thing I began thinking about was that three years were going to go by whether I went back to school or not.  Time just keeps going.  When you start something, it can seem like it will take so long, but in reality, the next thing you know, it's done.  For example, almost two years ago the Lord began dealing with me about going back to school when Derek started kindergarten.  That seemed like such a long time away, but now it's here.

I have a friend and she and her husband decided in August 2011 they should finish their basement before selling their home.  It was a huge undertaking, as they also have four small children to take care of, in addition to their day-to-day life.  But, they began working on it, and it's been a ton of work, and something they really hope to never do again.  Yet, I talked to her yesterday and they are almost done!  Their basement is almost finished!

What if they had never started?  What if they had decided it would just take too long to finish their basement?  Or it would just be too much work?  What if they had said they just really didn't have time to do a project like that?  They definitely could have legitimately used all those excuses, but if they had, she certainly wouldn't have been telling me yesterday that their basement was almost finished!  No, she may have been telling me, "We sure need to finish our basement before we try to sell our house, but it's just going to take too long" when in reality, she could be almost done!  Do you see what I am saying?  The reason they are almost done is because they took the first step and STARTED!  And, then they took the next step after that, and the next step after that, and...

Praise the Lord!  And, it's the same for me with going back to school.  I would prefer, in my own mind, to be done sooner, but three years is going to go by either way.  And, you know what?  That evening after I got home from that meeting with my adviser the Lord just ministered to my heart to just enjoy this time in my life.  To just enjoy going to school, and being a student.  To just get all that I can out of it, and don't be in such a rush to get to the next thing.  Just enjoy what I'm doing today.  I figure I might as well, and you know what?  I will!