Regnes said:
I'm also being smart by going into medicine, one of those general areas where there's always going to be good paying jobs.
That's not as sure fire a thing as it used to be. True, there will always be idiots, illness and injuries (I call a patent on a tabletop game based on the
Jackass franchise under that name), but a tremendous number of people are going into the medical field, be it as a nurse, aide, lab tech or doctor. Out of my entire high school graduating class (which was, admittedly, small for today) an overwhelming number of us went into the medical field (I'd say a solid 90-95% planned on a career in medicine).
The best counter to that, I think, is to make sure that you're absolutely as good as you can possibly be at what you're doing so you can stand out and, in the words of Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never give up." Best of luck!
OT: I've lived on my own, to varying degrees, for about 5 years now. I moved into a dorm the first semester I was in college, so I had a roommate. After the semester I got an apartment about a mile off campus, where I lived alone (though my then-girlfriend was over most of our free time). After that I got another apartment with one of my closest friends and we lived there for about a year. During that time my girlfriend (the one I'm with now, not the same one mentioned above) got pregnant, so we decided to move back to our hometown to be closer to the families. That changed drastically when I got accepted into a top-flight school in New York while my girlfriend was studying back home (Louisiana). I moved to NYC last fall for school, which is where I am now. I currently live with 2 other guys up here, though we don't see much of each other at home. We'll usually hang out and watch American football on Sundays, but that's about it.
If things go as planned (saying that sends a shiver down my spine, because things
never go as planned) then my girlfriend and our daughter will be moving up here midway through next year, after her practitioners license expires. She'll get her MT license for NY, I'll land a fabulous role in a popular Broadway show*, and all will be right with the world....
*In my dream world, I also have a pony. He vomits rainbows.