By Amy Nielsen

I am exceptionally proud of myself and I thought I would share it with you all. I have been working very hard over last two years to complete a study at home correspondence course with a well-known herb school. It is an intense study and requires presence, forethought, and definite attention to intention to complete.

It seems easy on the outset. It’s only ten lessons long after all. Each lesson is packaged in a neat little fiftyish page booklet with a few simple herbal projects to complete and at most twenty questions to answer for homework. Homework is typed and submitted either snail mail or email. Homework is returned marked within a month of receipt. No sweat right?

Until you finish gathering the first lessons supplies and reading through the length of time required to complete the projects for the homework. Then you realize that several of the projects take four to six weeks to infuse. Others take even longer. Some items aren’t in season when you are ready to work the lesson.

This is no springtime wander through herbal simples and pretty teas. This is down and dirty anatomy and physiology and delving into understanding chemical properties of plants and how they interact. It is about herbal culture, healing, and legalities of plant medicine. Not to mention the societal discussions around plant ethics, plant based medicine, food as medicine, and plant based diets.

I know people who have been working to complete this for very close to if not just over the allotted three year timespan and longer. One thing I love about this school is that they understand life happens and that this course is a luxury for many who take it. So for formal study they allot three years to complete the course. That I am completing it in just under two years feels rather a bit of an accomplishment.

I originally set myself a goal of completing in one year. I knew it was ambitious, but I was also committed and had what I thought was a terrific plan. I was going to be taking the class as a devoted monthly four-hour study evening with a local herbalist and teacher.

It became apparent after our first meeting that several of the students in the class would have a hard time meeting up with the monthly class and we slowly devolved into not meeting at all when the teacher moved away. I continued to plug away at the course, working in fits and starts as the mood, time, and finances allowed.

As I worked my way through the lessons, with each homework assignment I physically popped into the mailbox, I felt more accomplished. I chose to start this course for myself. For me. Because I was interested in it. I wanted to know more about it and I love the gal who was teaching the class. So I went for it.

I could have stopped doing it at any time. I had many perfect reasons to stop and not pick it back up again. But not only was I hooked on the material in the class, I met the author of the course and was enamored with her. I wanted to know more about what made her tick because she is one of the most amazing forces of nature I have ever met. In fact all of the herbal grandmothers I have met are in their own way, just like their beloved plant allies – they are forces of nature.

I was called. Called not to be like them, but to understand them and in turn to find my own purpose and my own nature among theirs. As they will be the first to tell you, like our plant allies, every weed, tree, and fungus has a purpose. I just had to find my nature, learn my soil conditions, and then bloom where I was planted.

When I reached then passed the halfway point of the lessons, I realized I had a drive to finish it. A personal need to have that certificate in my background. Not only could I see clearly how to use this knowledge for my own self-interest, but I began to see how this certificate could help me shape my career path.

My studies began to take priority again when I reached lesson eight. Three more to go before I was done. Little did I know that lesson nine was a killer. My homework regularly topped ten typed pages. Lesson nine ended up being a monster at 26 pages long - so many that it was returned to me for extra postage.

After the ordeal of nine and the entirety of the process, lesson 10 was a simple, week-long process of reading, contemplating, and writing, with no formulation work at all. Somewhat anticlimactic after the whopper of lesson nine. But as I popped that little red flag on my mailbox up, I breathed an enormous sigh of satisfaction. I had done it.

Lesson eight was about when I learned the eclipse would happen across the U.S. I set our epic eclipse trip as my deadline for mailing in my final lesson. Even if that meant mailing it from our totality viewing spot twelve hours from home, typed while riding in the RV.

Next weekend I go to a big conference hosted by the school whose course I just completed. I will begin my master’s classes in this same field the following week. I hit my mark of completing the correspondence course before the conference, before my master’s program starts, and before the total eclipse of the sun.

Right this second I could not be in a better place to ritually begin a new me as I pass formally from one career and phase of life into the next, sitting in my RV one mile from the center of totality for the great American eclipse of 2017.