It would be my quest for nine years

 

A heron embraces the sunshine

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In my senior year of high school, I spent hours in the sitting room next to the guidance counselor's office, nestled in a comfortable chair beside bookshelves filled with glossy college catalogs. Those catalogs were a respite for my mind and a dream for my soul. I studied the same colleges over and over. My favorite ones were Lenoir-Rhyne and Mars Hill, because they were smaller and not as intimidating as big universities. I gazed at photos of students in classroom settings, lounging on manicured, flowery landscapes, and congregating on the steps of magnificent architectures, and I dreamed about attending college. Some of my classmates had already applied and been accepted. They were eager to pack their suitcases for UNC-Wilmington or East Carolina, the party school, and head off to learn interesting things, live in dorms, and make new friends. I was dreaming of the same and reaching for the unreachable. For college, I would need $$$, and because I had none, I kept my aspirations mostly to myself. 

    The guidance counselor would sometimes come out and acknowledge me. Dressed in a straight skirt, nylons and heels, and a beehive hairdo, she smiled and encouraged me in my ambition, but she never asked about my financial situation or volunteered advice on paying tuition or finding a place to sleep at night. She probably saw me for what I was -- a dreamer; a skinny farm girl fantasizing about a college education. She was right, but skinny farm girls can be determined and never give up. 

    I always knew that after graduating from high school, I must provide for myself and stand on my own two feet, which required moving from my temporary living arrangements with relatives, finding somewhere to live, and buying a car. That meant earning a paycheck, and the only way to earn a paycheck is through gainful employment. Thus, I focused on finding a job and not on academic fairy tales.

    My high school business courses prepared me for a secretarial job. I could type and take shorthand like the wind. So, while I hankered to further my education, I applied for a position at an insurance company. The guy who interviewed me offered me the job, and he told me that company policy prohibited dating among its employees, which is irrelevant to this story, but the memory is permanently etched where memories are etched. His warning did not matter to me, because I didn't date anyway. 

    I remember little else from the interview, except that I would be paid two hundred and fifty dollars a month, a seemingly hefty figure for someone from the cow pastures and pig troughs. I accepted the offer, and the next day, one of my teachers with a motherly manner and a sincere interest in my future, questioned me about the interview. We were standing in the hall, and when I told her the salary, she turned and said, "Come with me." I followed her into the empty classroom, and she looked at me with great big brown eyes and flat out told me I could do better. The starting salary, she said, at a Fortune 500 down the road, was four hundred dollars a month, and she insisted that I arrange an interview there, and I always did as my teachers instructed. 

    I went for an interview and landed the job, and I began working for a happily married Christian man who would set the standard for all of my future bosses. My metal desk was next to his cubicle, and he taught me the ropes of being an efficient secretary. We would work together with only a few hiccups, like the time I typed an incorrect date on a mailing for a conference. Yikes! My congenial boss cut me some slack, and I survived that incident and others that might be buried under the bridges to my past. My boss and I were a dutiful duo for more than three years -- until disaster hit. Economic sludge resulted in layoffs based on seniority, and one Friday afternoon, he reluctantly handed me a pink slip. I was devastated.

    The only thing to do was update my resume and scour the classified ads. My skills were marketable, and I found another position working for an executive, earning an even higher salary, but as my bank account grew, so did my discontent. After a couple of dissatisfying years and bemoaning my first job, the economic sludge started receding and thinning out, and the Fortune 500 asked me to come back. I accepted, only to be assigned to a different boss in new surroundings, and the environment and relationships I expected to rekindle stayed hidden behind the clouds.

    College scenes in my mind kept on pestering me like a recurring dream, and in my late twenties, I mentioned to my boyfriend, whom I would later marry, that I wanted to go to college. From that moment on, he encouraged me, and he never stopped encouraging me. I enrolled in continuing education at a local university, and I continued enrolling for the next nine years. After working every day from eight to five, I would sit in a classroom, two and sometimes three nights a week. 

    The only class offerings in the evening curriculum were the ones that led to a business degree (this was decades ago, before ubiquitous internet and online courses), and the only degree I could complete on my schedule would be business related. Instead of studying English and creative writing, I studied economics and finance, and I was okay with that, because the college environment turned out to be quite different from high school, and I loved being in a classroom and learning. Some of the happiest times were the beginnings of semesters, when I parked my car near the university bookstore and walked through those glass doors to pore over glistening new textbooks and buy used ones.

    Making a long story short, nine years of evening classes led to a Bachelor of Science in Management. For the duration, I focused on the end result, a college diploma. Pieces of memorabilia from that phase of my life are tucked away in my heart and in a plastic tub in the basement. I still have the sheet showing total hours and courses required for graduation, which I carried with me from semester to semester, year to year, and methodically marked off the completions. 

    I enjoyed learning so much that I entertained the thought of attempting a Ph.D., but the journey had been long, and there were other things to do. My accomplishment is a personal one that is significant only to me. I defined a goal, and I attained it, because I wanted a college degree, which is not for everyone, and I cannot explain my unrelenting persistence during that time, except to say that much more could be written, but this is a blog post and not a book. 

    If anyone reading this is discouraged or at an impasse in achieving a goal, keep going and never let up, and know that a dream can really come true, even for a skinny farm girl.

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