Fair question. I've been asking it since the first anatomy quiz.

Here's the short version. I worked the front desk at a dental office for eleven years. I was good at it. I liked the patients. And every single day I watched the hygienists and the nurses from the oral surgeon's office next door doing the part of the job that actually mattered, and I thought, I could do that. I wanted to do that. I always had. When I was 18 I got engaged instead, and then Nicky came along, and then Gina, and then Anthony, and nursing school became one of those things you say you'll do "someday" while you're loading the dishwasher.

Last November my mother was in the hospital for three weeks. The nurses on her floor were the reason it was bearable. One of them, an older woman about my age, told me she'd gone back to school at 40. I said, "Oh, I could never." And she gave me a look. I think about that look a lot.

So in January I called the community college. In August I started. It's a two-year associate degree in nursing; at the end you take the state licensing exam, the NCLEX, and if you pass it you're an RN. Two years. I'll be 46. I'd be 46 anyway.

Nobody warns you about registration. Here is what I learned so you don't have to.

• You will take placement tests. Reading, writing and math, on a computer, in a room with 30 kids who have taken tests on a computer before. I hadn't. The math test asked me things I last saw in 1972. I placed into college algebra, which I had to take in the spring before they'd let me into the program. I got a B. I have never been so proud of a B.
• Bring everything. High school transcript (I had to write to the school district, and it took five weeks), your shot records (nursing programs want proof of your immunizations; I needed a tetanus booster and a hepatitis B series, which is three shots over six months, so start early), your driver's license, your Social Security card, and the form they mailed you that you're sure you don't need. You need it.
• The line. Registration for the fall was a Tuesday in April. I took the day off. I got there at 7:45 for an 8:00 opening and I was 40th in line. The advisor I finally saw at 11:20 was wonderful and about 25 years old and called me "ma'am." That was the first time. It was not the last.
• Get the advisor's name and use the same one every time. The second time you see them they remember you, and then things happen.
• The nursing program has its own application on top of the college's. There was a waiting list. I got in on the first try, partly (the advisor told me) because I'd done the math and the prerequisites first, so they knew I meant it.

Total time from first phone call to first day of class: seven months. Total number of forms: I stopped counting at 14.

I'm not an expert and every college is different, so ask your financial aid office. But here's what we figured out, because I didn't know any of it in January.

• The FAFSA. Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Everything starts here. It's free (the "F" stands for free; don't pay anybody to fill it out). It's a long form that asks about last year's income, so have your 1998 tax return next to you. File it as early in the year as you can. Ours was done in February. You get a report back that tells the college how much your family is "expected" to contribute, and the college works out the rest.
• Grants are money you don't pay back. The big federal one is the Pell Grant, and whether you get it depends on your family's income. With Frank working and me working part time we didn't qualify for much, but we got a little, and the college has its own small scholarship for "nontraditional" students, which is their polite word for people my age. I applied. I got $400. I framed the letter.
• Loans are money you do pay back. Federal student loans have lower interest than a credit card and you don't start paying until you're out of school. We took a small one. I'm not thrilled about it, but an RN's salary versus a receptionist's salary makes it math I can live with.
• Tuition tax credits. There's a credit on your federal income tax now for college tuition, and it applies to people going back too, not just kids. The details are beyond me; our tax preparer is looking into it for our 1999 return. Ask yours.
• The little stuff adds up. My tuition is about $1,700 a semester, but the books for the fall were $385 (the anatomy book alone was $110 and weighs as much as Anthony did when he was born), plus lab fees, plus a stethoscope, plus uniforms and white shoes for spring clinicals. Budget for it. We didn't, the first time.

My fall schedule: Anatomy & Physiology I with lab, Nursing Fundamentals, Introduction to Psychology, and English Composition (I tested out of the first one; this is the second). Fundamentals is where we learn to make a hospital bed with a person in it. Psych is fine. English is fine. A&P is the one.

The class meets Monday and Wednesday mornings; lab is Wednesday afternoon. In five weeks we've done the cell, the tissues, the skin, and now we're on the skeleton, all of it, every bone and every bump and groove on every bone, and there are a lot of bumps and grooves. The lab has a real skeleton (plastic, but real-shaped) and a box of loose bones that we pass around and have to identify with our eyes closed. I can now tell you the difference between a right femur and a left femur by feel. Put that on a resume.

How I'm surviving it:

• Flash cards. Index cards, bone on the front, everything about it on the back. There are 140 of them so far, held together with a rubber band from the newspaper. They live in my purse and I do them in the car line at Anthony's school.
• The kitchen cabinets. Every cabinet door in my kitchen has a bone taped to it. The refrigerator is the pelvis. Frank opens the silverware drawer and gets quizzed on the carpals. Gina thinks it's "disturbing." Gina is 13. Everything is disturbing.
• Saying it out loud. I walk the dog and recite the vertebral column. The neighbors have stopped asking.
• The study group. See below, under the 19-year-olds.

First lab practical is October 6. There will be a report.

Facts about my classmates:

• I am older than my A&P instructor. She is lovely about it. I am also older than the two other "returning students" in the program, who are 31 and 36 and have decided, wrongly, that I am their mother.
• They call me ma'am. I've asked them not to. They can't stop. It's like a tic.
• They can find anything on the library's computers in about nine seconds. I bring them snacks. This is the trade, and everyone is happy with it.
• They do not take notes. I don't understand it. They sit there, they look at the instructor, and then they get a 91. I write down everything and get an 88. I'm working on this.
• Two of them, Kristen and Marcus, and I have a study group on Sunday afternoons at my house, because I have a kitchen table and a coffeemaker and they have a dorm. Kristen wants to work in pediatrics and Marcus wants the emergency room. They're wonderful. Their mothers should be very proud. I have told them so, which they find "disturbing." (See: Gina, above.)
• They have never seen a rotary phone. Marcus asked what my son's name "Nicky" was short for, and I said Nicholas, and he said, "Oh, I thought it was a nickname," and I said, "It IS a nickname," and we had to stop for a minute.
• None of them, not one, has made me feel like I don't belong there. I was terrified of that. I was terrified of being the punch line. It turns out 19-year-olds have their own things to be terrified about, and the lady with the flash cards is not on the list.

Here is a school night. Up at 6. Lunches, bus, drop Anthony. Class from 8 to 11. My part-time shift at the dental office (they kept me two afternoons a week, bless them) from 1 to 5. Home, dinner, homework (theirs), practice pickup, dishes, Anthony's bath, Anthony's book, lights out. And then at 9:15 the kitchen is quiet and the table is mine and the anatomy book comes out and I read until my eyes go.

That's the part nobody tells you: school isn't the hard part. Fitting school into a life that was already full is the hard part. Some things I've learned about the kitchen table:

• Clear it completely first. Mail, homework, the fruit bowl. Ten minutes of clearing saves an hour of looking at the mail.
• Good light. We replaced the ceiling fixture with a brighter one in September. Best $22 we've spent.
• Decaf after 8. I learned this the hard way, at 3 a.m., reciting the cranial nerves to the ceiling.
• A timer. 50 minutes on, 10 off. In the 10 I fold something. It's amazing how much laundry you can fold in 10 minutes when the alternative is the endocrine system.
• Bed by 11:15 no matter what. I tried midnight. It cost me the next whole day.
• Saturday morning is mine, 7 to noon, and everyone in this house knows it. Frank takes the kids to the park, or the store, or his mother's. I sit in the quiet with the book. It is the best five hours of the week.

My husband is a mechanic. We've been married 24 years. When I told him in January that I wanted to do this he said, "OK," and I said, "That's it?" and he said, "What do you need me to do?"

What he's done: he makes dinner Mondays and Wednesdays now (it's the same two dinners, but they're good dinners). He does the dishes every night while I clear the table for studying. He learned the bones off my cabinets to quiz me, and can now identify the scapula, which he says will "come in handy." He drove to the school district office to pick up my transcript so I wouldn't have to take another day off. He tells his guys at the shop that his wife is going to be a nurse, and I know this because one of them told me at the grocery store. He hasn't said a single word about the money, and I know he's thought about the money, because he's Frank.

He's also a terrible flash-card quizzer, because he reads the back first, and mispronounces everything on purpose, and I laugh so hard I forget the answer. I think this is on purpose too.

If you're thinking about going back and you have a Frank, you're most of the way there. If you don't, you're still going to need people. Find them. Say the words "I need help with this" out loud. I'd never said them in 44 years and it turns out it's a full sentence.

Five weeks. I know. Take it for what it's worth.

1. Start the paperwork now. Transcripts, shots, the FAFSA. Every one of them takes longer than you think. If you start in January for August, you'll just make it.
2. Take the prerequisites first, even if it means an extra semester. Math, English, whatever they need. You'll get your feet under you, and the program sees that you're serious.
3. Tell everybody. Your boss, your family, your church, the neighbors. It's embarrassing for a week and then people start handing you things: a used anatomy book, a Saturday of babysitting, a story about their own aunt who did it at 50.
4. Get a good bag. The books are heavy and you'll be carrying them across a parking lot in the rain. I have a backpack. I am 44 years old and I have a backpack, and it's fine.
5. Sit in the front. You can hear, you can see the overhead, and you can't hide, which is the point.
6. You are not the punch line. You're a customer. You paid for this. Ask the question. Go to the office hours. The instructors like it. The kids are too scared to.
7. Don't compare your 88 to their 91. Compare it to your 1972 self who never took the class at all.
8. Something has to give, and it's going to be the house. My floors are a disgrace. I've decided the floors can wait two years. The floors are not going to be an RN.
9. It goes fast. Five weeks ago I was scared to walk in the building. This morning I identified a fibula with my eyes closed. Not a big thing. But two years is just a lot of little things in a row.

September 24. Five weeks. First A&P exam back: 88. First Fundamentals check-off (handwashing; yes, there's a check-off for handwashing, and yes, I did it wrong the first time): passed. Kristen and Marcus came Sunday and we did the whole axial skeleton on the kitchen floor with the cards laid out like a person. Anthony walked through it. We made him the sacrum. He was thrilled.

September 10. Fell asleep face down on the integumentary system. Woke up at 1:40 with the outline of the spiral binding on my cheek. Frank took a picture. The film is at the drugstore, and it's not going up here.

August 30. Second week. I got lost looking for the lab and asked a kid for directions and he looked at me and said, "Are you looking for the office?" No. No, I am not looking for the office.

August 23. First day. Sat in the front. Wrote down everything. Cried in the car afterward, a little, the good kind. Then went and picked up Anthony from school like a normal Monday.

Older entries are in an actual paper journal, which is where they'll stay. I'll add to this as the semester goes, assuming I survive the skeleton.