Dress in a shirt you can read
Dress for your dream job
Reading Exercises the mind--wear athletic clothes
Wednesday was college day---wear a shirt from a college you attended/like. So, of course, there were many red and black UNLV shirts. We had an interesting assortment on the children and the adults, because Vegas is a city that people have come to from a large variety of previous hometowns.
I wore this shirt, which I'd made the night before.
The caption says: "Just keep going till you get it done.
On this shirt is the logo of each of the six colleges that were on my transcript when I was finally awarded my bachelor's degree. The seventh logo is from the aforementioned UNLV. In May, I'll have (finally) completed my master's degree in Educational Research and I'll graduate. (I actually have credits from two other universities, James Madison in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Utah State in Logan, UT, because of week-long Constitutional teacher seminars I attended there at different times.)
As the students and fellow teachers would read the shirt and then look closely, they'd either laugh or they'd just look at me and say, "Wow, that's a lot of colleges." Well, yes it was. But that's what happens when you let chickens interrupt your education. Well, they weren't exactly chickens---distractions. But, from my first day of college until my bachelor's degree, 23 years passed.
I started out at BYU as a traditional 18 year old co-ed. In our family, you went to college. During high school, the Christmas gift from my parents to each of teen-agers was a piece of luggage until you'd acquired a nice set of four. That was enough to pack everything up to go away to college when you graduated. It may sound weird now, and someone once commented to me, "Gee, hint, hint, huh? We're ready for you to move out." But it was actually a really terrific gift, and we all knew it was meant to help us with the next important thing that our parents wanted for us: higher education.
However, after a year and a half, I dropped out because I really didn't have a plan. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and, although I enjoyed being at a college for many reasons, attending classes was not high on the list. I moved to California, got married, had five kids and then realized that I did want to finish college, after all. If for no other reason, I was going to need a job someday when they all grew up and got very expensive all at the same time, and I certainly didn't want to have to work at any of the difficult and bizarre jobs I'd held as a person with no particular qualifications other than a willingness to work hard.
With our youngest child just a six week old baby, I enrolled in biology at San Diego City College. I'd liked the topic in high school, and since my original goal was to become a nurse-midwife, I figured it was a good place to start. One day a week, I attended my class and hired my friend to watch the two little boys. The other three children were in school. I moved on to algebra at night school for the next semester, and CoolGuy was the babysitter. I just plugged along like that for three semesters, and then we moved to Idaho for a couple of years and I had to stop. There wasn't a way to conveniently or inexpensively go to college where we were living. But we only spent two years there, and then it was back to California in a different location.
After a year of babysitting for a teacher, and getting every one of our children going to school all day, I qualified for my residency and started back at Oxnard College. I took classes there and at Ventura College simultaneously to get everything I needed. Finally, I had enough credits to attend the last two years at California State University, Northridge for a bachelor's degree. The state university had a satellite campus in the county where I lived and I took most of my coursework there. I only had to drive the fifty miles to L.A. to the regular campus for one semester. In addition, they had an agreement with UC Santa Barbara so that one term, I had some classes there and it was included in my CSUN transcript. That campus was only 30 miles north, making the commute much easier. And, did you know, that even though those credits were earned twenty years earlier, they accepted my 22 from the BYU transcript--the pathetic GPA, notwithstanding.
It was a triumphal day when I graduated. One lady at church asked my teen-aged daughters what they'd learned watching their mom finish college at this point. They said, astutely, "We learned to go to college and graduate before you get married and have five kids." And, to their credit, they both accomplished that goal! At that point, I'd opted to be a teacher---same schedule as my children, all that. So, I wasn't actually "finished" because, in California, you must get the BA and then go for two more years in a teacher credential program that isn't a master's degree---just a certificate. But, I'll never let that certificate expire! I renew it regularly in case I ever get to live there again and want to be hired as a teacher.
So, on college day this week, I wore my "transcript shirt" just to show them that going to college is worth it. Don't stop till you get it done. It may take a few years to get, but a diploma doesn't expire.
And, no, I don't remember why the two younger brothers are in such a snit. But we do have three photos in a row of this scene (taken by our home teacher who came to my graduation). In the first photo, one brother is doing something silly, while the other brother looks on in disdain. In the next shot, the looks are reversed--one upset, the other smiling. Then, I guess an older sibling told them to knock it off, because they're both grouchy in this final one. In all of the shots, the parents are obliviously smiling into the camera.
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