I may need to give some back story for this, to explain why I am so pleased to have found and made my own brain cell. I left school at 16, partly through my own fault, so I never got to University. When I trained to be a nurse it was a very practical training, we had a couple of weeks in school learning how to fold your cap, and make beds with hospital corners and pillow slips opening away from the door of the ward and then we were out there, learning on real patients. It was great fun, but no-one saw nurses as intellectuals. Deep down, however, that is what I believed that I was, and it rankled. Still, in no time I had two children, and then we moved to France, where I had to work full time. Life carried on, but finally in 2006 I decided to put my money where my mouth was, and enrolled at the
Open University and began a degree course in the Humanities. I am now about halfway through. It was much harder than I had imagined, and I realised I was not quite as clever as I had imagined. It does however, feel like a worthwhile thing to accomplish, and I really enjoy the discipline and the challenge.
It's taking a long time because
a) I am still a full time nurse, with a house and family, and
b) the courses are expensive so I can only afford about one a year.
Anyway, this year I am doing a course about
Mental Health*, and last week I was studying the biology of the brain, synapses, neuro-transmitters, re-uptake inhibitors and action potentials. During a break I was reading a post on In-Tatters, followed a link, and there was
Martha Ess's pattern for a brain cell! It felt like serendipity, and so I had to tat it right away, and then I wanted to share it, but no-one around me is at all impressed....so I am showing it to you.
*What has Mental Health got to do with the Humanities, you ask? Well, absolutely nothing, but I am allowed a certain number of points outside my subject, and my employers are paying for this course, so it gives me 30 points towards my degree, free, plus it is interesting and relevant for my work, which is dealing with alcoholics.
