Circles in my Life

As I get older I think I get more thoughtful about my life. Having more time to myself and not having the usual day-to-day pressures of working and living, allow for more thoughtful moments. It also shows me how life works in strange circles. I guess when you come down to it, I’m a person who believes in things happening for a reason at the time they happen. I make the moves and I make the decisions, for the most part, so the changes are caused by my decisions.

When I was writing my previous post, I mentioned things about my working life and a brief note about my entering college. And that simple explanation is the crux of this blog.

Ever since I can remember I have always wanted to go to college. As a young kid, school came pretty easy to me. I loved to read and I loved to learn. Maybe because as a youngster I felt my family life was so chaotic, I learned to escape by reading. I also figured out I could find out about any thing, any place or any person by reading. That fact alone, I think, helped me become a good student and to be the life-long learner that I am. Hello Internet, you are my friend.

My grades were good in school and I actually did earn a few hundred dollars in scholarships. However, at the time I wanted to go to college, a few hundred in scholarships didn’t quite cut it for college. So I worked for a while and saved as much as I could.

My plan was to become a teacher – teaching English literature at a junior college level. My minor was teaching business classes. I kind of always hedged my bets in life. If I couldn’t get the required education for teaching literature, I always knew I could get a job teaching typing, letter composition and all the other things needed for the business world.

I enrolled in Salem State Teachers College in the fall of 1959. I went there because I was able to have free room and board in a friend’s house for taking care of her daughter after school. Sue Wagner had been a neighbor in Brighton for many years and my first job was taking her baby daughter, Carol, for stroller walks after school. I stayed in their house, took care of Carol and did most of the house work. Sue was suffering from breast cancer at a time when you didn’t really talk about it. Her husband was some kind of a scientist or engineer or something like that and was always working. Sue just didn’t have the energy to take care of her daughter so it worked out great for me.

Not only was Sue a great friend as I grew older, she was a great teacher. She taught me how to play the piano by ear. Oh how I wish I had continued with that. I was only able to live with them for my one year at college because Sue died shortly before I finished my first year at Salem. It was not appropriate for a young college girl to live with an unmarried man and his daughter, so I had no place to live.

I had to drop out of college and get a job in the real working world. Even today, as I type this, I can remember the feeling of loss that I experienced about not being able to continue with my college education. I had only what little money left that I had saved with the previous 18 months of working. I needed that money for an apartment and clothes to begin my working life.

After I got into working and could finally afford it, I enrolled in Boston University at nite. I also took a few classes at Harvard University but I could only take them at nite because women were not allowed at Harvard during the day. You had to enroll at the woman’s college and that was only open during the day and you had to be a full time student. But during the evening hours, I could take one class a semester at Harvard. Remember, this was the early 60’s when there was no such a thing as women’s rights.

In any case, any semester I could afford it, I would enroll in college classes. I didn’t have any definite plan, at that time, as to what I wanted a degree in; I just wanted a college education. So I would take whatever class fancied my attention at the time.

Eventually I got married and moved to California where community college was free. Halleluiah! I could finally afford to go to college. But I was still working full time; my husband at the time was in the military and they don’t pay their members very much. In order to have a home and live in a nice neighborhood, both of us had to be working and earning a combined salary that would allow that kind of livelihood. Also, don’t forget that women only earned about 50% of what a man earned, no matter if she were educated or not.

But as the years went by, I continued to take college courses and finally with a destination in mind.

In 1977, after my husband retired from the Navy, I figured it was my time and I quit my job. Beside, we were paying almost as much money as I was making - in taxes, babysitting, my clothes and lunches, gas and whatever other monies it takes when you work. I figured I could save money by going to college full time and I would be home when my kids got home from school. So I enrolled at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and spent 2 years earning an Associates Degree with an emphasis in marketing. In other words, I did the first 2 years of college but with a definite degree in mind. I could now transfer to a 4 year college and get a Bachelors in Business.

Well, that didn’t quite work out as I planned. Due to family problems caused by being more educated than my husband and marital problems cause by other things in life, I was expected, and truefully at that time, wanted to go back to work. I won’t say my now ex-husband was not helpful when it came to my wanting to continue my education… I’ll just concede it caused many problems.

However, even after getting a good job that I really liked, I still took classes toward my expected degree at nite. Eventually the pressure of trying to keep a family together, trying to keep a dying marriage together, and lots of overtime, I gave up going to school and dropped out of college.

There is a happy lining to all of this. When I finally gave up trying to save a dying marriage and got a divorce and the kids decided to go with the money (live with dad), I now had time and certainly the desire, to finish my college education. And I did just that.

I decided to change my major from the classes I had been taking at Cal State Fullerton. Actually Cal State sort of helped me change. The core classed I needed for my degree were only held during the day and I was still working full time so I couldn’t attend the classes. I enrolled (at nite) in National University’s Bachelors in Behavioral Sciences program (psychology and sociology) and finished in just under a year. I had all the credits from Orange Coast and Cal State and only needed to take the core classes to get my degree. National’s program allows you to take one subject for 5 weeks which equals a semester in a regular college. And I got my B.A. in June 1988. When you think about it, it only took me about 29 years from when I first decided to get a degree. In my book, that means dedication and desire.

Of course being the over-achiever that I was (and to some degree still am), I took a 6 month respite and then entered National’s Masters in Counseling Psychology program. I decided I wanted to change my whole life and become a therapist.

It is often said that people become therapists so they can learn to straight out their own lives. Well, that really worked for me. I found out so much about myself and learned who and what I was and why I did some of the things I did and didn’t do. I also learned to change aspects of my self that I didn’t like and leave some that I wasn’t ready to change. In many respects, it was the most expensive therapy I’ve ever had (I’m still paying off my student loans). But it is something that no one and no thing can take away from me. I own it; I use it; I love having it; and I wouldn’t have changed one thing about those 18 months.

But how does all this work into how circles of life work. If you remember early on in 1959, I wanted to become a teacher. I took a long side road that brought me into the business world where I had some successes… and it allowed me the money to get an education. With a Masters I was able to get teaching credentials for teaching in California Community Colleges. I was also able to take two semesters at Cal State Long Beach and get my teaching credential to teach technology (computers) and business subjects in K-12 and vocational schools.

And that’s where I spent 17 years teaching… part time.

My first teaching position was part time at a private business college in Anaheim, CA. I taught 3 nites a week, while holding a full time position during the day. That position I secured even before I had a B.A. Just having an AA degree and years of business experience allowed me to teach. Then around 1999 when I was laid off, I figured I wanted to be a teacher full time. But full time positions were hard to find so I settled for working part time.

What was truly interesting to me was that once I called myself a teacher, I became a teacher. When I got laid off, I decided I didn’t want to work in an office again and I just wanted to teach. Part time worked for me because the kids were older, one married, one off in other states working and it gave me a bit of free time for the first time in my life. Then with the advent of a grandson growing and getting into school, teaching allowed me to pick him up after my classes and take care of him till mom or dad got home from work and could pick him up from my house.

And that’s where the circle comes in. So many years ago I wanted to be a teacher and after a jog in the road, my desires and dreams came true. Now I call myself a retired teacher. For the moment that works for me. Will I decide to take another part time teaching job in the future?... who knows.

All I understand is that when you put your mind to something and you want it bad enough and you work for it hard enough, it will eventually become a reality for you. I may have taken a huge jog in the road, but I did what I was supposed to do, become the person I was supposed to be. That’s not so bad when you look at it in the whole, eh?