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My treasure! They
helped
me survive
college.
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Happy Mothers’ Day,
everyone! I wish you smiles and
sunshine, love and laughter.
My memoir is a story about
believing in oneself, of finding the courage to begin a dream and then
discovering the strength needed to see it through to completion. The
perspective is an older student beginning college, one with no college
preparatory foundation. A person with
children to raise, a home to maintain, and a college curriculum to
understand. It’s supposed to be a
humorous journey of a mother of five through college: how I coped with both
motherhood and college.
I don’t know if I was afraid of
academia, afraid of going to college exactly.
I think it was more like I was nervous about embarrassing myself in
front of other adults and people I didn’t know.
But aren’t most people worried about that?
Compounding this was the fear of
looking bad in the eyes of my children.
Let me explain. I was the head of
my household. Okay, I shared the duties
with my husband, but I was in charge of the home front. I did the homework and projects with the
children. I retaught my learning
disabled firstborn each day. I was their
entertainment more often than not. We
were a tight family unit. [God blessed
us for sure!] If I did poorly at college,
I thought, it would be like I failed my family.
These are some mental issues I
address in my memoir. But I need to go
deeper. I need to explore this idea of
finding courage. And then maintain that
courage to gain that degree.
Now because I lacked the courage to
begin college, I feigned bravery to be able to register, to take the basic
skills test, and then the basic skills math courses. Because I was afraid and dressed myself in a
false front, I became edgy and started lacking in my attention to the children,
their antics, their well-being, the home, meals. These anecdotes fill the pages of the memoir.
If I think about it, it was more a feeling
of being unprepared for college. Other
college students, younger college students, had a preparatory foundation that I
lacked.
Not having this college foundation
tied into my next obstacle attending college:
a feeling of inferiority. And it
intensified once I gained entry to University of Pennsylvania.