The Journey into College

I thought I would do a post about college even though it has not started yet for me there is always things you can do to prep for classes however or the program you will be studying. For me, my degree in Computer Information Systems (CIS) with Computer Science (CS) classes thrown in as well. The degree is just considered an Associate of Applied Science in CIS and for me, I consider it to be slightly a duel program because I get a chance to complete all of the computer science classes as well that are required for the Computer Science degree.

But I thought I should back a little ways into why I wanted to do this degree and how I chose it but also go through applying for college and those steps. When I first moved out west, I had no intention of going back to college and the CIS is very much a big career change for me since I already have a degree in Associate Degree of Nursing (ADN) which when I finished that degree, I took the NCLEX-RN exam and passed so am a qualified RN for two states because I took the NCLEX-RN for one state then a few years later applied for a RN license in another state which just required ensuring they got ahold of my original NXCLEX-RN results, college transcript, plus money but I did not have to take another exam to qualify for becoming a RN in the second state. For me, nursing does not seem like me or something I should be pursuing because I do have problems with multitasking and never quite enjoyed it. I did enjoy learning about nursing and still on a weekly basics do learn a few new medical things through watching a TV series/show called Untold Stories of the ER. I knew for the past two and a half years I got into computers and how different Google products worked (so things like Hangouts, Gmail, Google Drive, consumer Google+, Google Search, Google Translate, and etc) so wanted to explore that a bit more and got into a conversation with someone who knows the ins and outs of computer science. I asked them if I could get into fields with my slightly techy side and they told me about computer science and systems managements and what they believe that I could be very good at based upon their observations of how I navigated the online world and took to learning information without any formal learning or even in an environment that did not encourage the learning. At the same time as those discussions were going on, I decided to go over to the local library in the town I was hanging out in. I found a book that perked my interest about fields in forensic science, which was a field I had been interested in about 3 to 4 years previously but never took any classes in though my college at that time was just opening up some new classes about that particular field. The book talked about forensics in relation to many other fields and occupations such as nurses, computer science, dentists, anthropology, pathology, and others. What interested me most was computer science and nursing since I have already been in the field of nursing and I have had some sort of interest in it. Originally with nursing, I wished I could have combined it with my other loves of research and chemistry however never wanted to be in a nursing program that takes 10 years since I saw that most likely to combine my interest was at the PhD level or something that high. The book implied the way to combine forensic science with computer science was to become a computer forensic specialist.

Traveling on my Own Two Feet

What is it like to be traveling on your own without the usage of proper transportation? For me, transportation from east to west consisted of an airplane and then from there, it became learning about the public transit system which is mostly buses and at times taxis. But not having your own transportation does mean a chance to get exercise and walk. Every city has a different way with how they do the bus system meaning some towns can have 13 routes and that many buses and they do the route every hour or every 30 minutes. Other cities have one bus that does a loop around the city always going in the same direction and offers a bus out to different cities. The bus around the city might be every hour and then the bus out to another city might occur 4 times per day. Some cities might have two main bus routes that touch different parts of town and then occur a certain number of times per day. Some bus routes have many stops in their routes and other ones have less stops on their routes and a very set number of stops. Some buses have chatty drivers and other ones not so much and they don't like talking to them while they are the driver.

Cooking Creativity

I thought since my previous post was about grocery shopping, I thought this next post would be about cooking and what to do with the ingredients you buy.

But first let me start with the items on hand for this week's food creations:
Dry green split peas
5 6oz containers of Yogurt
Cottage Cheese
Mayo
1 loaf of bread
Pasta Shells
Strawberry preserves (basically the same thing as jam/jelly)
Creamy Peanut Butter
Tomato Sauce
Colby block cheese
1 lb of sausage
About 2.5 lb of chicken breasts boneless
Head of red lettuce
2 vine tomatos
1 green bell pepper
1 cucumber
1 container of sliced mushrooms
1 sweet onion
Chicken Taco Seasoning and then regular mild taco seasoning

How to Shop for Food

Something that I have learned over the past few months is the art of grocery shopping, which for me is more fun than clothes shopping. Depending on where you are located, you might have a large variety of stores or you might have very few places to chose from to do your grocery or like me you just chose to go to the closest store to you that sells food because you don't have your own transportation. For me, the place I am closest to is a market or at least that is what I call it since 'market' is in the name. Within a mile radius of here, there is a Walmart (which sells much more than just food) and a Grocery Outlet. For me, my place is called McKay's Market.

You might have the basic idea of how to go grocery shopping if your mom or another relative used to take you along with them. Where I came from, we had a variety of stores so I knew which foods were good from which store since we had Giant Eagle, Sam's Club, Marc's, Aldi, Save-A-Lot, Walmart, and an Acme all within I would say a 3 mile radius. Some stores are great for bulk foods like Sam's Club and other stores are better for smaller quantities such as Save-A-Lot and Aldi.