"Passion? Passion? Is Passion here?"

Have you seen "Community" on NBC? That's me. The diverse life at a community college. I am taking two classes this spring. One, an online medical vocabulary course, and the other a class on campus. It's called Health Care Concepts. It's exactly what you'd think. An introduction course for those considering a career in health care. In class, we will study the organizational ladder of health care providers. The teacher is a savvy, 60-something African American woman. She's worked at the Dept. of Justice, Dept. of Commerce, UC Long Beach, and twenty-something jobs in-between. She lived in Los Angeles, Ohio, and Kentucky before she figured out the Arizona desert heat is best for arthritis.

There are 23 of us in the class. No one else looks like me. They are very young, older (50+), Black, Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, and everything in-between. For years I've heard whites will one day be the minority, and today I saw that as a reality. On one side of me sits a Japanese girl named Suzy. Her notebooks are adorned with Hello Kitty and she writes with a puffy, pink pen. On the other side of me is Veronica, Her dark complexion is complemented with smoky, deep-set eyes. Diondre is about 300 pounds and his pants hang dangerously low to the ground. Dave is about 55, and his eager voice and quick hand in the air show his willingness to learn .

About a quarter of us are looking at a job in respiratory therapy, and the rest of the class is spread out amongst numerous positions, from radiology to hospital unit coordinator. We did a name game to learn each other's names, and I can remember the following : "Jesus, Jill, Jeff, Andrea, Dawn, Walter, Diondre, and Passion." Yes, Passion. We spent the first class SPELLING internal medicine specialties. Dermatology, neurology, urology, cardiology, gynecology. I'll admit I rolled my eyes and thought "Is this necessary?" But I'll also fess up and tell you that spell check just alerted me that half those words were spelled incorrectly.

For everyone, there is a beginning. And this class is there to help us all sort it all out. I'm not above any of it. I've just known for some time that this is the correct path for me. I've chosen it, dedicated myself to it, and am ready to get the show on the road. It will be an interesting semester. There's a small chance I won't gain a lot of information from the class, but I think there's a strong likelihood I will learn something from my teacher and classmates.