Once my divorce was imminent, the harsh realities hit me. I would have to sell my house and downsize. I would have to get a different job as I no longer had my ex’s medical plan. I also needed to make more money. I fell into teaching after my kids were born. The hours coincided with theirs, vacations lined up etc. The problem was, I was never in one place long enough to establish a “career”. Each time my ex was transferred I had to change jobs. The result was a lot of years of teaching but little to show for it financially. When we moved to VA I got a job in a small private school which I enjoyed for the most part, but the pay was not great and the benefits nonexistent. It soon became apparent that I would have to look toward public school if I were to remain in education and be able to support myself and my sons. I had several years experience in working with special needs children. After my son was diagnosed with autism, I immersed myself in the foreign world of special education until I became enough of an authority on it that my private school created a department just for me. I became the coordinator of special education services. Fortunately that experience held me in good stead when I needed to move on. A friend of mine who was a special education teacher in the county told me I needed to work for the county. And because she is from Brooklyn, this woman knows how to make things happen. She introduced me to the Head of the Special Education Department in the county one night, who was so kind and patient with me. She became my mentor, guardian angel and friend all at once, as she explained what my options were. It seemed that despite not having the proper certification nor a Master’s Degree in Special Education, I had enough experience that I could get a job with a provisional license, provided I took an intro to Special Education class and applied to and be accepted by an accredited grad school program. Oh and yeah… I had to complete my degree in 2 1/2 years……Gulp…is that all???? Sure…no problem….Start a new job in a huge county, apply to and get accepted by a grad school, pay for it and of course there is that little matter of graduating….all this while finding a new place to live, helping my younger son who was struggling at the time of the divorce, and figuring out how I was going to pay my mortgage! Got it! No problem!
Somehow I did all that. Was accepted into the program and about to start my first class. I have to add that just applying to grad school was a stressful situation, which almost brought on cardiac arrest multiple times. Everything was online!! I had to figure out how to access applications, get recommendations, find transcripts that were so old they were archived and then actually apply, all while starting a new job and selling my home so I could downsize to my new lifestyle, keep myself and my kids afloat, and help care for my terminally ill brother and aging parents…….But I digress…Here I am, after more years than I care to admit, about to step foot in my first grad school class, which I miraculously found after my good friend Wendy took pity on my missing sense of direction and took me on a dry run, so I could find the parking lot, the building and then the classroom!
As I walked from the parking lot to my building, I was expecting the other students to be young, but I didn’t think they’d look like they were 12! I had to dodge skate boarders for Pete’s sake! When I was last in school I thought I was so cool because I had an electric typewriter!! If only I were half that “cool” now. As I skulked into class, I desperately looked for someone other than the professor who was my age. To my horror, even the professor was considerably younger than me! I did see one or two other people who were perhaps in my decade but the rest?? They looked as young if not younger than my kids!!!
I emailed the professor and asked what I should bring. She told me to bring my books and a notebook. So I came armed with texts and a spiral notebook with a bic pen. Little did I know that every other student had laptops….I guess they called them notebooks?? So already I am in trouble. Then the professor proceeds to tell us to check “Blackboard” frequently. I look around and only see white boards…I’m looking for chalk…How do I check assignments when I can’t even find the blackboard?????
Panic begins to set in. I am on the verge of a full blown anxiety attack when I ask a nice young girl next to me, who also hailed from NJ and actually took pity on me about the Blackboard Situation….she whispered “Ummm….Blackboard is an onsite tool, that we need to log onto”…sigh….Now I have to figure out how to log on, create login info, passwords etc. I also discovered that the login for Blackboard is different than the login for my emails which is different from the login for my transcripts, which….well…you get it…I was dizzy before I even took my first note. So this first night…I sit stunned…wondering what the hell I got myself into….why I was doing this and if there is any way I could avoid getting my Master’s degree and still keep my job, which I was given based on experience, but with a provisional license…which only covered me for a 2 year period..…My answer?? Nope! I had to put on my big girl pants (in my case definitely not the skinny jeans or skin tight leggings, or gulp…the thongs that were peeking out of pants everywhere I looked, that most of the kids wore in class)….sigh…I looked desperately around for my communicator so I could ask Scotty to beam me up…..Sadly….all I had was a smart phone…which, as you would predict, I barely knew how to use…….
New Endings 