Ready to take on the world
This week I will drive to Indiana and pick up Selena from college. Where this first year of her college life has gone is beyond me, but she has loved every minute and is working hard at her nursing degree. Her tenacity for study has astounded me, and I’m very proud of her, just as I am my other two children who are working hard for their futures. It seems we’re all working hard to attain, to achieve, to go one step further and strive for that hard-won prize.
I wasn’t much for studying in high school. I would wait until the night before a test to cram some information into my brain, hoping that the grade I would get would be at best average. English papers? Those were mostly done the night before as well, and I could always squeak out a solid A- or B+ on my writing skills alone. College wasn’t on my radar back in the mid 1980s as I just knew that the collegiate life wasn’t for me. I wanted adventure and foreign countries, plus I wanted more than just books and learning. Most of all, I knew I wanted to get married and have children, as old-fashioned as that sounds nowadays. I couldn’t see a career beyond any of those things I just mentioned.
There are times I regret not going to college. When I go on college visits with my children, especially the one to NYC we took with Hunter, my heart pines for what I think I may have missed. Dorm life and the lifelong friends you make, the halls filled with books and words, late night coffee drinking and all the things you associate with college. My mind right now is filled with the thought processes of getting ahead in the fields that I love: writing, freelancing, and social media. They take up my brain day and night, filling my head with ideas and ways to make my words better and my skills deeper. I believe now, at age 45, I’m ready for college. I’m ready for those brain cells to fire and to learn as much as I can. It’s interesting how life works, and even though I won’t go back to college, I know I’m at the place I should have been some 27 years ago. It just took me awhile to get there.
I wouldn’t trade my voluntary service trip to San Antonio after I graduated because I met George there. The trip we took to Mexico, driving down and up tiny roads filled with gravel and danger, and living there for eight months—those are times I treasure. Having each one of my children because I was ready for them—ready for the responsibility those tiny souls needed—is something I would never trade even though we were young. I am now facing the empty nest and I’m ready. I did what God called me to do at a young age, and now I’m listening as he’s directing my life in my middle age. He’s full of surprises and the things He puts in our hearts. Take heed and listen because you never know what type of path, fraught with new and exciting things, he might lay out for us. I don’t want to miss one second of it.
Find this and other columns of mine on The Holmes County Bargain Hunter.
I wasn’t much for studying in high school. I would wait until the night before a test to cram some information into my brain, hoping that the grade I would get would be at best average. English papers? Those were mostly done the night before as well, and I could always squeak out a solid A- or B+ on my writing skills alone. College wasn’t on my radar back in the mid 1980s as I just knew that the collegiate life wasn’t for me. I wanted adventure and foreign countries, plus I wanted more than just books and learning. Most of all, I knew I wanted to get married and have children, as old-fashioned as that sounds nowadays. I couldn’t see a career beyond any of those things I just mentioned.
There are times I regret not going to college. When I go on college visits with my children, especially the one to NYC we took with Hunter, my heart pines for what I think I may have missed. Dorm life and the lifelong friends you make, the halls filled with books and words, late night coffee drinking and all the things you associate with college. My mind right now is filled with the thought processes of getting ahead in the fields that I love: writing, freelancing, and social media. They take up my brain day and night, filling my head with ideas and ways to make my words better and my skills deeper. I believe now, at age 45, I’m ready for college. I’m ready for those brain cells to fire and to learn as much as I can. It’s interesting how life works, and even though I won’t go back to college, I know I’m at the place I should have been some 27 years ago. It just took me awhile to get there.
I wouldn’t trade my voluntary service trip to San Antonio after I graduated because I met George there. The trip we took to Mexico, driving down and up tiny roads filled with gravel and danger, and living there for eight months—those are times I treasure. Having each one of my children because I was ready for them—ready for the responsibility those tiny souls needed—is something I would never trade even though we were young. I am now facing the empty nest and I’m ready. I did what God called me to do at a young age, and now I’m listening as he’s directing my life in my middle age. He’s full of surprises and the things He puts in our hearts. Take heed and listen because you never know what type of path, fraught with new and exciting things, he might lay out for us. I don’t want to miss one second of it.
Find this and other columns of mine on The Holmes County Bargain Hunter.
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