Sadie Green

Section 56

October 22^nd, 2007

Cause and Effect

Late Bloomer to College

At 52 years old, I am late to start a college education.  There are reasons for this, of course, and at this age, I can look back over my life and understand more clearly why it took so long for me to finally want the legitimacy that a formal education brings.

To begin with, college was never part of my family history. I come from a poor, farm family that values hard work and physical labor. Although my father was the valedictorian of his southern Minnesota high school, he enlisted in the service and was shipped to the pacific within weeks of graduation. Upon returning, he worked as a hired ranch hand, met my mother, and began a family. If he harbored any college dreams, his children never knew. In fact, I can’t think of a single relative in my large, extended family who attended college. Even now, I am the first of my nine siblings to enroll.

Not only was there no model for me in academe while growing up, there was a negative attitude toward educated people in general.  Messages like “Educated people think they’re better than us” or “City folks can’t tell the difference between a cow’s front and a cow’s backside” were embedded in my family culture. Educated people and city people were often glommed together. Smart-ass, rich, educated, all were foreign and inferior somehow, as a matter of pride. I was removed from my family and its rural culture in ninth grade, by social services, but those old embedded messages came with me.

My greatest barrier to college, however, was my lack of self-confidence and hence, my inability to recognize education as an opportunity. Because I lived for several years near the University of Minnesota campus, working as a waitress where college students congregated, I did flirt briefly with the fantasy of becoming a student myself. I applied to the College of Liberal Arts and filled out financial aid forms. Once there, however, classes were held in auditoriums that seated hundreds of fellow students but not another soul I knew among them. Sure that everybody else was cooler, better informed and more entitled than I was, I’d sidle off in shame rather than assert myself, ask simple questions, or admit confusion. No one noticed me, much less encouraged me. After a brief battle with the financial aid office about my full-time job not meeting work-study requirements, I got angry and gave up.  It didn’t occur to me to pursue the conflict beyond the window clerk.

Eventually, in my late twenties, I found a niche within the co-op movement which led to work in social-change non-profits. I developed pride for my working class identity, and learned real-life lessons in these organizations, such as; gender studies, global history, fair-distribution economics, citizen responsibility in a democracy, and small business administration, among others. I read voraciously, enjoyed all kinds of people, and thrived inside this world for twenty years. When I finally considered doing something different, I thought I was too old to begin college.

Then I read the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, about a doctor named Paul Farmer who for decades divided his life between Harvard University in Boston and a health center he developed in the poorest part of the poorest country in the world, Haiti.  His dedication to those with the least resources and his ability to move between such different worlds inspired me to look at my own purpose in life. Since most of my friends are college educated, and I am not, I bridge two worlds.  When I was 12, I stole bag lunches out of lockers, I was so hungry. Desperate for change at home, even then I understood that those who are most comfortable have the greatest influence to affect change.  Because of their relative comfort, however, they are the least likely to use that influence to do so. Now I am the one who’s comfortable and knowing what I still hold to be true makes me feel guilty.  For that reason, I want legitimacy, and am in pursuit of a nursing license as my ticket to be useful. I understand why my road to this point was a long one but my reasons for avoiding formal education are now gone. Late bloomer or not, I am finally going to college.