) and I noticed that it's been more than two years since I tried and succeeded to come back to UCSB. I feel a story is called for here, but I'll try to keep it short.
When I graduated from high school I came up to UCSB as a Chemical Engineering major, not exactly hopeful of my prospects of success nor commited to the idea of being a chemical engineer. Consequently my grades degraded and about two years after I started I dropped out and left Santa Barbara, returning to San Diego to work and live with my parents. (I should have known my time there was jinxed when my grandmother died the day I moved into the dorms--no shit).
Anyway in what was the darkest time of my short life I worked in a series of crummy dead end jobs and eventually joined this website (I could swear it was in like october/november 2002 but it says february 03). At some point in there I decided to go to junior college and take random classes, trying to get a feel for what I wanted to do. It didn't really work, but what id did do was build up my confidence as I mnanaged to get straight A's for about a year and a half. At some point toward the end of that, still not knowing what I wanted with my life, but leaning toward accounting, I decided to see if I could go to real university again, and too lay to actually send an application anywhere, sometime in december 2004 I asked UCSB if they would let me in.
They did.
It was such an incredible moment, and I can't describe to you how grateful and happy I was that I could come back to school here. I don't want to say it was the happiest moment of my life (offhand I can think of a few better) but it was up there. What's hitting me is that that was two years ago. It seems like I've barely been going to UCSB on this new track for any amount of time at all, but it's been two entire years since that day when I was practically jumping for joy with excitement at the prospect of moving on with my life.
It's strange thinking of how much I must have changed over the past few years, but I don't notice it, I feel the same as ever. In some ways I suppose I am, such as the way in which I'm writing this rather than studying for tommorow's final 
You'd think a guy who was so happy to be coming back would be taking more advantage of what he's gotten. Well, that's being a bit harsh on myself, I've been doing very well here 
Anyway, this is my nostalgic/optomistic Christmasy entry. I guess I'm feeling the season. It's incredible what a lucky person I am; a fact I don't remind myself of often enough. Maybe I should get a tattoo somewhere, "YOU ARE LUCKY."
Update: I feel ready for my exam:
For whatever reason I was looking back through my blog posts
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And re: your comment--funny, because what I'm doing is fairly closely related to insurance. We'll see how it goes.