Stories: Physical Therapy and New Work Environment Essay

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A life changing move “Follow your heart and everything else will fall in place,” I remember telling my wife while having dinner. I had no idea the journey we would both embark on following that conversation. The most profound life changing experience I have had is when I made the decision to help my wife quit her job and go back to school. This five year journey was paved with many obstacles including the challenging of managing finances, moving, adjusting to a new work environment. My wife graduated from the University of California Riverside with the intent to go into law school. After graduating she accepted a job at a law firm in order to strengthen her decision to move forward with graduate school. After a year with the firm, she realized law was something she did not want to pursue. She wanted to be in a helping profession but felt stuck because of the security of her present position. Miserable and unmotivated, I realized my wife needed to follow her true passion to become a Physical Therapist. In order to make this happen, she would need to go back to school full time to complete the prerequisites and gain work experience in the field in order to apply to a doctorate of physical therapy program. I felt compelled to help my wife realize her dream and offered to be the sole provider and support her. The first obstacle we faced was surviving on a sole income. This proved challenging due to my wife and I being accustomed to living a certain way. We had a Pot 2 strict budget to adhere to and often times would miss out on birthday celebration dinners and family outing due to budget constraints. My wife started couponing in order to cut our food and miscellaneous expenses allowing us to allocate the savings to help pay for her school books. I maxed out on overtime at work, took up odd jobs and at one point sold toys out of my truck in order to increase our income. Our hard work and dedication started to produce our first success when my wife was accepted into a doctorate program of physical therapy at a university in San Diego.
Then came an alarming realization of how we were going to pay for the school tuition which was approximately $10,000 per trimester and continue to survive on one income. We were fortunate to qualify for some financial assistance, but it did not provide the extent of what was needed to cover tuition and living expenses. This financial burden proved tougher than the previous one encountered. We continued to live as we did before with the addition of my wife dog or baby sitting which allowed her to study while earning extra money. In addition she would complete online jobs through mechanical turk in order to build an Amazon bank to assist with purchasing school books. Relocating from a home I have known since I was a child proved difficult. We were lucky to have had the opportunity to stay in California and be relatively close to family and friends. Over time, being two hours away seemed like a world away. Talking to my family on the phone to vent or support was not the same as being there in person. We felt isolated in a community and culture we were not accustomed to. San Diego was a sleepy town in comparison to Los Angeles where living was fast paced.

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One of our challenge with relocating was working with our budget constraints and finding area that met our expectations. Safety was a concern and one of the elements that would heavily weigh in our decision. In addition, we needed to find a place that had a vacancy immediately due to my job relocation coming in earlier than expected. I was fortunate to work for a large company that had a sister location located in Carlsbad. However my transferring meant that I needed to be at my new office immediately. Commuting one hundred miles everyday was not an option due to the cost of fuel. We ultimately found a place in Vista. We look back now and realize that it was just a small
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