I've spent the last several days working on a freshman orientation program we will begin this school year. The best part of it was being with the kids. Doing this kind of work can be frustrating in many ways, but the kids always save me from throwing up my hands and running out the door in a fit of drama. Imagine what it's like to be greeted with hugs and sheer delight in seeing your face, after a couple of months of vacation. That's the kids. Gotta love 'em. And I gotta remember this, oh, say about next March.
Since vacation is ending, I thought I'd post this piece I wrote a couple of years ago, after helping with a move in another of the district's schools. It explains how I became a teacher, why I still am one, and how I'll change my life if I win the lottery, even though I don't play.
I Love School
Recently, we high school teachers helped those at other schools in the district get ready for construction work that will take place this summer. I worked for several hours moving boxes and furniture and wrangling garbage. It's the kind of work that erases all bitterness about having to make student loan payments at age 50.
My journey to college is a long, complicated story of missed opportunities and poor decisions, the result of which is a splendid, now 30-year-old daughter, and a lot of experience checking groceries, framing art, and performing office tasks. I spent 10 years as a medical office manager, for which I was paid a ridiculously low wage and, get this, was offered no medical insurance. Hence, by the time I got to the university at 41, I really wanted to be there. I agonized over whether to begin my studies at the local community college, where tuition and expenses would be considerably cheaper, or go for the complete university education I longed for. Here's how my decision-making process functioned in this instance:
A slip of junk fluttered from my car insurance bill, offering back-to-school scholarships of $5,000, $2,500, and $1,000 to hopefuls who could explain, in a limited number of words, why they wanted college. I wrote my essay and decided that if I got any of the three offerings, it was a "sign" that I was to follow my dream and shoot for the university. I got the $2500. So I loaded up the truck and moved to university. Bigger school, junky car.
The University of Iowa offered me a full-tuition scholarship based a 23-year-old ACT score, no money in the bank, and my promise to maintain a 3.5 gpa. I was given decent PELL grants (remember decent PELL grants?) and a part-time job in the university payroll office, thanks to a dear friend whose uncle ran the place. She liked me and also wanted the office job I would be leaving (thank you, thank you, sweet Michelle).
Despite my good fortune, being a "nontraditional" student (wtf kind of label is that?) has its financial disadvantages, even compared to kids whose families can't afford to help much. No riding the coattails of parents' health insurance, or car insurance, nothing to do but stay and spend summer earnings on high u-town rent. No free laundry or going home for long periods of freeloading in general. As a result, I'm now a 50-year-old teacher with six years of experience and a student loan to outdo many of my 25-year-old colleagues. Not pretty.
But I'm not complaining, I can't begin to express what my time at the university did for me. Not here, not in a thousand words, probably not in a War and Peace-length tome. Besides, I learned that if I die before I finish repayment, the loan is cancelled, freeing my daughter from the burden of an encumbered estate. This discovery is making grad school more and more attractive.
If I win the lottery, I'm going to pay off my student loan and spend the rest of my life weaseling my way into the great universities across the country, starting with UC Berkeley in the West, moving on to Boulder and Ann Arbor, and finishing up in the east coast institutions of the Ivy League, probably crouched under a desk. Because I'm certain I wouldn't meet their admission standards, and I'm not legacy anything, even with a gazillion lottery bucks in my bank account. When I get too old to army-crawl in and find my seat on the floor, I'll play the age card, feeding on the pity and authority complexes of liberal professors who wouldn't dare to damage their reputations by ejecting an elderly, earnest, note-taking grandma for her refusal to conform to the restrictive policies of the man. For insurance, I'll use my lottery windfall to slip each of them a bribe; maybe a lifetime of weekly meals at the best restaurant in town. But I digress...
Last May, when I was doing the exhausting work of the decent people who were my supervisors for the three measly hours I spent doing their jobs, I wondered how my life might have turned out, had I not taken the chance to further my education. Instead, I'm a grateful teacher with student loan angst and a lottery dream. Cuz I love school.
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