Today’s post comes from guest author Cyn Huddleston and is the first in a series I’m calling On Her Way. Each of the posts will feature a woman telling her own story in her own words.
“I have to quit. Can I quit? I have to quit.”
“You absolutely do.” My husband Adrian has always been my biggest cheerleader and source of unending support.
I did quit the work that I loved at a job that I didn’t. But that decision left me with an unplanned and unexpected hole in my week and, I was to find out, in my life. How to fill it?
At 47 years old, Adrian had retired from active duty military life to the San Antonio area. Our daughter Ariane lived in Austin for college. Adrian, now a civilian for the Air Force, was finishing up a bachelor’s degree that had fit in around his frequent military deployments. We had finally bought a house of our own and were happily decorating and painting.
Dropping my income was a blow to the family budget. I searched the want ads and signed up for job search sites on the Internet. Nothing looked interesting or fit my particular skills.
I had a practical nursing degree, was a veteran, had worked for years in IT in libraries, and found a new passion as a volunteer for survivors of sexual assault. It would be so much easier if I had a bachelor’s degree, I thought. I couldn’t put that thought out of my mind.
My biggest regret in a pretty good life was not having my BA. Truth be told, I was more than a little envious of my daughter and husband. A good student, I had picked up some credits over the years. However, I really wanted to have a degree on the freshly-painted walls of my study. A degree would signify what I could do, that I had been tested and passed.
How could this work? We would really miss the money and hadn’t put anything aside in an education fund for me. Not only would my paycheck be gone, I would be costing my family money. I worked the budget, shifted numbers, and reworked it. In breaks from budgeting, I searched the office files for copies of transcripts and looked online for fax numbers of colleges from coast to coast and in Germany.
“Honey, I quit looking for a job. I am going back to college. To get my degree. Full time.”
“It’s what you always wanted,” Adrian said. “If you can work it, do it.”
I worked it. Alamo Community Colleges had a satellite campus close by. Classes were cheaper, but I would still need to take out loans. It was early December and the semester started in mid-January. In a whirlwind of papers, faxes, online forms, and visits to the college, I got it all done. I was enrolled in five classes – American History, Speech, Sociology, English II, and a non-credit algebra class to get me ready for college algebra.
College Algebra. I tried to be happy with the college and let the algebra work out in time.
Happy doesn’t mean fearless. My stomach would roll thinking about everything I was facing. But just as often, I would get a giddy rush to my head. I was a college student, and I had an ID to prove it.
“I go to college.” Using her favorite childhood present-tense way of speaking, I called my daughter.
“You go to college? Well, it’s about damn time,” she said. I love that girl.
I did go to college. My education at the Northeast Lakeview College campus of Alamo Community Colleges was a success. ACC offered me a scholarship after my first semester, and I was inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa honor society, which led to another scholarship when I transferred to Texas Lutheran University in Seguin.
A hole had opened up in my week when I left my job. Rather than seeing it as an empty spot, I decided to use it as a chance to fulfill a life-long goal. None of it was easy. College would present some of the biggest challenges of my life. Classes, homework, and tests are tough enough for an almost-50 college student. Imagine how I felt the day I discovered I was old enough to be my seatmate’s grandmother.
In the next installment of Cyn’s story, she tells what it’s like being 50-something in college.
Cyn Huddleston lives in Universal City, TX with her husband Adrian, cats Zelda Fitzgerald and Deacon, and a good old dog named Preacher. She fills her days with pets, friends, and writing. She has no holes in her good life.
No Comments