School's almost out.....

In nine more days my kids will be out of school. I am out of school for the moment, but I'll be taking summer classes. I'm afraid if I stop for the summer I'll forget the math I learned last semester, so I'm going to just blow through. I/m taking 2 other classes though...another sociology class and a music class. After I pass math this summer I have one more class to go and then I never have to take another math class again.
Sometimes I think it's funny to be 39 and finishing what amounts to my freshman year of college, but then I think about my grandfather. He was a doctor, but he didn't start med school until he was 42. I don't plan on med school, and even if I had my degree long ago I would have taken all the time off for the kids so it's just as well I waited until now. You can have it all, I just don't think it's practical to have it all at once. It's tough now working full time while I have kids and they are teenagers, except for Shortie who's nine. Their dad is home with them most afternoons, but I still miss then and wish I had less antisocial hours. On the plus side, when I finish school I can get a job with better hours, and more pay so it'll be easier to pay for 4 college educations that are coming up with four kids.....one will start in 2012, on in 2013, the next in 2015, and the last around 2018.
The older three know what they want to do with their lives, and good for them. It took me until I was 38 to get over what my mother kept telling me to do and do what I was interested in. Of course it helps that I'm the one paying my way know, she had more say when she was paying the bill, more say than I should have given her, but what can you do when you are 18 and really don't have a clue? You listen to Mom, even if she's wrong because you think she has your best interests at heart. Maybe she does, but when you have interests as diverse as ours were it doesn't go well. One thing I learned is to let my kids choose, not to tell them that no one will take them seriously if they choose one class over another. During my first try at a degree, Mom talked me into Psych 101 instead of Sociology 101 because Soc was the "lighter" class. Well, Sociology is my major, and I might have stayed in school if I could have taken things I was actually interested in. In the end it was all for the good, since I stayed home with kids I started having at 23, but sometimes I wonder what she'd say now. I can't find out, she's dead. But I still wonder. And I love what I'm taking, even if Dad does tease me and call me a closet communist.