March 23, 2017 – I was academically intimidated, but only for a short time

          When I arrived in the county, I was forced into a sabbatical for a few years as I was the wife of the Plant Manager at the new plastic manufacturing plant.  Upper management cautioned all of the families that moved to the county to run the new plant, that the underlying purpose of the owner was to “bring jobs to the county – not have your wives steal jobs away from people in the county.”

History:

Back in high school I could have tried for scholarships because my grades were good, [often on the honor roll], but my parents pointed out that I would need “a car” in order to get to those scholarship colleges and they didn’t have the money for that.   So, I picked up all the secretarial and office procedures classes I could in high school and landed a job the day after graduation at a surveying and engineering firm. [I car pooled to work with my parents for a year until I earned enough money to buy my first car.]

          I basically had the same skills that many of my friends received from the two-year secretarial colleges, yet I had gotten them all in high school, i.e., shorthand, typing, accounting, office machines, and business English, to name a few.  So, I was on my career path two years ahead of my contemporaries and had advanced from secretary to office manager in a matter of only a few years without a college degree.

Back to Rutherford County

Once I unpacked the moving boxes, made drapes, decorated the house, and put in my massive gardens, I mentioned going to college to my husband and he said, “Yeah, good idea.” 

So, the forced sabbatical at age 35 gave me the incredible opportunity to go to college as the tuition and books were reasonable.

I signed up for the entrance exam and took it.   When I got the results I was academically intimidated.  My scores were awful and I was more than embarrassed. I basically shelved the idea for several months until I had the gumption to mention my stale, low entrance exam results to a friend.

 

“You’ve been out of school for years. When was the last time you actually took a test?  Don’t worry, it’s a community college – they have special classes to bring you up to college level in English and Math, and whatever.  You take those and then you just jump in.”    She was upbeat, optimistic, and adamant about it.  I borrowed her optimism and spunk and welcomed her pushing my back as I moved forward in my college education quest.

 I took the entrance exam again, which was slightly better, as I wasn’t as nervous and then I plowed ahead.  I am not sure if it was my scores were low  or that I was an “older student” that they assigned me to one of the physical education teachers, but that is who my “advisor” was.  I told him about my wanting an AA degree on my resume even though I had already held the jobs that usually required it in the past.  [In hindsight, he actually was the perfect advisor for me.]

I also told him that I needed to take all the “bring me up to standard classes”.  He felt I didn’t need them all and I said, “Oh YES, I haven’t been in a classroom in a dozen years, I don’t remember how to study.”  So, we made a plan of action and during the summer session I took all the update classes and began my journey through college.

It was a good move, doing the “update classes” because the first day in the Math Lab I sat down at a round table nearest the door and a fellow older student, a blonde took a seat at the table.  Then another older student, a brunette, sat down at our table.  We immediately introduced ourselves.  Then, an older student, a Vietnam Vet, joined us. Suddenly we were not alone in our quest to get a college education at our “older than the traditional college age”.  Just that first day we gained great strength knowing we were not alone.

Eventually we became close friends and study partners.   We surpassed our goals as we destroyed the grading curve in all the classes we were in and we had a wonderful time with the extracurricular activities as well.

The moral to this story?

          A year or two later my backdoor neighbor and still close friend, went off to college to become a Nurse.   She mentioned I had inspired her to “go for it.”

          I did it, she did – you can do it too.  It doesn’t matter what age you are – you can do it.