I meant to get back to this sooner – First, yayyy Mrs. Butler! You really needed someone like her in your life and poof there she was!
I also got an AA at a junior college, then went on to get a BA. I ended up being a Medical Lab Technician at 2 prestigious hospitals as well as developing a lab myself in a 7-doctor practice, eventually doing hundreds of thousands of tests/year by myself.
I really enjoyed being a tech and learned so much about the human body as a result. And looking at stained blood slides was like going into a different universe. Beautiful! Just gorgeous! I always meant to get a few in a picture somehow, then make framed posters.