Venture Capital

View of downtown Miami from 8th floor of Grove Station Tower in Coconut Grove

My daughter is going to nursing school. She’s 26 and recently married. Since her prince charming is not independently wealthy, she has decided she needs a job that pays real money, and nursing looks like it fits the bill. She already has already put in her time to earn a degree, so she wants a course of study that will take the minimal amount of time. She shopped around and found two schools that offered a one year, accelerated course in nursing: UM (University of Miami) and OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University). She applied to both and was accepted at UM. OHSU put her on a wait list. It would have better if she had gotten into OHSU, being as it is within commuting distance from our house. We waited as long as possible, but we heard nothing from OHSU, so we reserved a couple of seats on a flight to Miami, packed our bags and flew down here a week or two ago.

We spent a couple of days scrambling looking for a place to live, a day shopping for furniture and household supplies (like laundry detergent. I was astounded at the amount of stuff she thought she needed, but I’m not going to quibble. It’s still the smallest expense of this campaign.), a day or two looking for a car and then a day putting together the furniture from IKEA.

It’s been a rough week, but we are almost completely squared away. And then she gets a phone call from OHSU. Explitive. Seems that she now has the opportunity to go to the school that she really wants to attend, Double explitive. So we set about looking at what it would take undo all of our hard work and return to Oregon.

We spent several days stewing on the matter, but yesterday evening I realized something. Miami was good enough when she applied, it was good enough when she was accepted, and it was good enough to pack our bags, fly down here and go through all these monkey motions to get her settled in her new digs. So phooey on OHSU, they had their chance and they blew it, so daring daughter is going to UM, I’m flying home, and we can forget about having to unwind all our hard work.

The apartment in Miami is a little expensive, but all told her living expenses for the year are a fraction of what the tuition is. Sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and see your endeavor through. My daughter hasn’t agreed with my proposal yet, but she hasn’t disagreed with it either. Here’s hoping she sees things my way.