Ticket to ride

It’s been thirty years since I graduated from Eastmoor High School in Columbus, Ohio, so that means it’s been thirty years since I accepted a full scholarship to the University of Toledo. The rest, as they say, is history.

Had I not gotten a full college scholarship, I probably wouldn’t have gone to (much less graduated from) college. I certainly wouldn’t have gone to graduate school, and I most definitely wouldn’t be a college professor today. The daughter of a truck driver and a housewife, I never seriously considered going to college until my high school guidance counselor suggested that my standardized test scores would qualify me for scholarships. Since my family has never been one to refuse free money, that was it: if I could go to college for free, I’d go.

Much has been said about the power of a college degree to lift students out of poverty: workers with college degrees consistently make more than workers with only a high school diploma. But money is only half of the story. Nobody gets rich as an adjunct English instructor, but the job offers other benefits: for me, having an intellectually-stimulating, satisfying job I enjoy is truly priceless.

This is easy for me to say, of course: because of my full scholarship, I didn’t graduate with student debt, and it was only in graduate school that I had to juggle my studies with the demands of being a teaching assistant while holding down a part-time job. In 1987, the value of a scholarship covering four years of undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board, and books came to a whopping $20,000: these days, a four-year degree costs significantly more than that.

But even though many of my current students have to work to pay their way through college, I still see higher education as being a sound investment. There are plenty of respectable, well-paying jobs that don’t require a four-year degree: when your toilet is spewing sewage or your car won’t start, you’ll pay whatever price your plumber or mechanic demands. But if you don’t want to pursue a trade, and if you recognize the job you’ll have in twenty years probably won’t be the job you have today, a four-year degree offers something better than a mere boost in pay: it offers the flexibility to do a variety of jobs, not just the one you get when you first graduate.

What my full-ride scholarship ultimately gave me was a ticket to ride. I sometimes tell people that I went to college and never came home, and that’s one way of understanding the trajectory of my professional career. Receiving a scholarship and going to college not only opened doors, it opened my eyes to greater possibilities.

 

Most likely to succeed

Several weeks ago, I got a Facebook message from a high school friend saying she is going to our thirty-year high school reunion in Ohio later this month. I had initially decided not to go–I had gone to our twenty-year reunion in 2007 and figured not much has changed since then–but since H is coming all the way from California, it would be a shame not to meet her halfway.

It’s an understatement to say H and I lost touch after high school: we lost touch in the way that people on entirely different planets lose touch. After high school, H and I went to colleges in different states, and we moved in different directions after that. Today, my college students keep in touch via social media with every friend they’ve ever known, but thirty years ago, moving away from your hometown meant you lost contact with people. Thirty years ago, you went to college, made new friends, traveled in new circles, and became someone new, all without the safety net of your old friends.

So it’s been thirty years–three decades!–since I’ve seen H: how is that even possible? One mystery of middle age is the realization that your body and mind don’t age at the same pace. When I look in the mirror, I see a pudgy, “well-settled” middle-aged woman, but in my mind, I’m still a broke and skinny graduate student playing life entirely by ear.

Thirty years ago, my high school classmates voted me “most likely to succeed,” so the occasion of my thirty-year reunion is leading me to ask the inevitable question: have I succeeded? I suppose it depends on how you define success. In her Facebook photos, H looks beautiful and youthful: a radiant, grown-up version of who she was in high school. To my eye, I look older, heavier, and grayer now than I did then: washed up, or maybe just worn-out?

But this is judging mere appearances, and success is more complicated than that. Looking back to high school, who was it I wanted to be, and what is it I wanted to become? Thirty years ago, I wasn’t planning on being an English professor; back then, I wanted to be an interpretive naturalist working in a metro park somewhere, taking people on nature walks and teaching them about birds and flowers. I teach inside these days, and I don’t spend nearly as much time as I’d like among birds and flowers. But I am still “interpreting” information: I’m still teaching.

And I’m still writing: that is one thing that remains constant. As a high school student, I loved to write, and I still do. I’m not sure I knew thirty years ago exactly what I wanted to write; I guess you could say I was a writer in search of a topic, motivation, and voice. But I knew I wanted to write even though I wasn’t sure what exactly to do with that desire.

What I have managed to do over the last thirty years is figure out how to keep writing, regardless of whatever other things in my life are changing. In college, I discovered Annie Dillard and other American writers I’d never encountered in high school, and in graduate school, I learned there is a thing called “nature writing” that people other than Thoreau do.

Since high school, I also discovered Natalie Goldberg and her admonition to keep my hand moving, and in large part I have managed to do just that. I also discovered May Sarton, who assured me that simply keeping a journal of one’s inner and outer life could be art, and I discovered blogging as a way to share my thoughts immediately, without the intervention of an agent, editor, or publishing house.

When I was in high school, I wasn’t sure how I’d support myself; I just followed my curiosity wherever it led me, and I continue to do that. Does that make me a “success,” or does it make me a dabbler?

I’ve always been uncomfortable with the label “most likely to succeed.” I graduated in the 1980s, when success was defined by the excesses of Dallas, Dynasty, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. One of my favorite TV shows when I was a teenager was Family Ties, but instead of admiring the clean-cut ambition of Alex P. Keaton, I admired the warm-fuzzy liberalism of his earthy-crunchy parents. To me, “success” always sounded cut-throat, and I’ve never felt I have the ambition–the kill-instinct–to become a lawyer, politician, or high rolling businesswoman.

Despite all this, thirty years later I’ve done fairly well for myself. I made it out of Columbus, out of college, and out of the Midwest, and like H in California, I’m living in the heart of the “coastal elite” here in Massachusetts. The fact that my life today looks so radically different from what I ever envisioned in high school suggests just how far I’ve come. Maybe “most likely to succeed” is just another way of saying “going places she never even imagined.”