this is a convoluted tale and I'm not sure I should impose upon my readers by telling it
I started college in 1990, when I was fully pregnant with Son Number One. In my final month, I decided to take a semester off after his birth and then continue school later. Which I did. Then in 1993 I was pregnant with Son Number Two. Since the birth of Son Number One was so uneventful afterwards, I decided I would go ahead with the next semester and maybe just take a week off from school. My teachers were all cool with that. But then I had a c-sec under general anesthesia. So I had to withdraw from classes for a while. But by then I had changed my major from film/photography to engineering of physics. Then I took my first class of calculus. To say it was love at first test would be an understatement. I even remember "the Moment" - the moment when I fell in love. I was struggling in the class and the professor was working with me after class to help me along. I wasn't struggling in an "I hate this!" kind of way, I was struggling in a "I know this is easy if I just find the secret" way. And during one intense after-class moment, I GOT IT. The secret hit me. I Suddenly Understood It All. Even all my PRE-CALC that I had barely gotten through (C in pre-cal 1 and a B in pre-cal 2) Suddenly Made Sense. Not only did it all make sense, it was
*BEAUTIFUL*
I swear I heard an angelic host. I swear the Deities smiled upon me. I swear the whole universe just gave me a hug. It was that pivotal to me.
So the next day, I changed my major to mathematics. I'd figure out the details later.
Then I got pregnant again. And we decided to move.
So soon after Son Number Three was born, I entered school again. Majoring in Math. I figured I might go into statistics, maybe game theory, maybe combinatorics or even *goosebumps* number theory.
I read books about math. I read biographies of mathematicians. I read "for dummies" and other intro books as "light reading" I tutored occasionally.
But I was struggling in school again. Not because it was hard (It WAS hard but that wasn't a problem) but because my marriage was clearly falling apart and my life needed total rearranging.
So I quit school AGAIN and made some much needed changes. I must say, getting rid of the man was quite liberating. I started being "alone" and occasionally "dating" and I discovered I really really liked it. School was on a back-burner because of the logistics of it all. Eventually though, I decided to go back again. But this time I needed to do something that was going to be profitable. Well, duh, computers. Specifically, programming. I had done some programming in high school then took a basic course in FORTRAN back in philly college so programming seemed like a decent compromise. I went to DeVry. Which was exceedingly stupid in retrospect but they were the only place that had saturday classes which were "accelerated" so I could take ONLY saturday classes and still get out in four or less years. In fact, I could do it in less than three. Possibly two with my transferred credits.
I did alright in DeVry, really, but I also discovered that programming was NOT my "thing". I liked it okay and I was reasonably good at it, but I did not eat sleep and breathe it like all my classmates did. They went above and beyond what we were doing in class just because it was fun for them. I thought it was fun occasionally too but I, unlike just about everyone else, had a very complicated life I was trying to hold together at the same time. Then eventually, the ex stopped being reliable about taking the kids. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he was hooked on heroin. Well I really didn't have a lot of options about keeping the kids while I went to class on saturday. I tried shuffling things around but the fact was, with accelerated classes if you missed two saturdays, you were kind of screwed. Eventually I had to admit it wasn't going to work. I'd have to drop out again, get the kid situation settled and then maybe go back.
When I found out how DeVry had screwed me on the tuition loans, I vowed to never return to DeVry.
So I just sat it out.
Now, its about a decade later and I'm finally back in school. But I changed my major again. Why? Because of several things:
1) I don't mind the idea of teaching. And from everything I've learned on my own in special education it seems natural that I'd go in that direction
2) my (former) best friend CONVINCED me that I'd be good at ASL and I romanticized the idea of being in the program with her.
3) I don't want to go to school and start ALL OVER again. But I also recognize its' been a LONG time since I studied math. I'd need to, essentially, start over again. Maybe not with pre-cal, but go straight into calc 4? Oh hell no. Not ready for that.
4) Math is actually considered to be a field for young men. No, that's not me crying in my soup over discrimination, that's me being factual. The prejudice against women in the sciences is large enough, in math? Its outrageous. I actually feel like I'm getting too old to want to keep fighting that uphill battle
5) It just seemed smart to pick something I could do in two years and still enjoy and make a mark with.
6) I had realized that economics was the field I should go into but I can't afford to pay for tuition at a college now. Not for four years or even three years or two. Student loans for community college are cheap as dirt - barely 10K a year. If I went to Ga State? triple that. If I got accepted to the college of economics? QUad that.
7) Lets not pretend studying math is easy. It isn't. Its one of the things I loved about it. But it felt "right" for me. But now, I feel like I'm too old to do it, too old to struggle that hard and win.
But now, I just wonder if I should have gone back to my real love. Am I just doing the SLIP because I am too timid to attack the real degree I wanted?
I told a classmate I feel my brain is too old to learn as well as others. She accused me of making excuses. It stung. Like she was telling me "bootstraps!"
I'm just too tired of life to hear that and keep fighting.
Am I giving up? Have I already?
J thinks I can do this program and do well. I am at a point where I wonder if I can do ANYTHING well. Have I passed that point? Am I settling? Or am I being flexible?
What the fuck should I be doing???