If you go on this ride with me, you're going to need a seatbelt!

The last few posts have been a little down. 

But not intentionally. I mean I didn't start out thinking "hmmm, how can I make everyone depressed".

I look at blogging as a diary that you share. You write what's in your heart at the time. Sometimes  it's a lot of gunk clogging your arteries. 

For me Blogging is soul cleansing. 

As I was lying in bed last night I was thinking about life. My life. I have a great life. A really good son and an amazing supportive husband back me up. I've gone through a lot of crap in my childhood and regardless of how good life is now, sometimes the past just has a way of smacking you in the face.

For me, it's when I venture out of my comfort zone. And what a wonderful little piece of heaven I live in...until I start thinking about my goals.

Sometimes goals stink! They make you move even, or especially, when you don't want to. I want to finish something I started a long time ago, but that meant stepping away from what I feel comfortable doing. 

Those of us who struggle with a less than optimal childhood drag a lot of discomfort along with us. So when we find our zone of comfort, our place we fit, the place where we finally feel we belong, and maybe the one place where we aren't told all the time how inadequate we are, we don't want to leave it.

I was a good para, I take good care of my house, my son (even though he has his own place now) and my husband, but it was time to move. The GOAL struck me.

So I signed up for classes, my son gave me one of his old book bags, and I filled it with books and my laptop, and off to school I went.

Reality check time! I mentioned before about not being in school much as a child, talk about a fish out of water. I felt like I had been hit with a live tuna. I don't know how many of you have been hit by a tuna, I haven't actually, but I can only imagine it feels like going back to college in your 50s with a bunch of teenagers as classmates.

So stick around my blogs won't always be on the down side of life. Life really is good. My blogs reflect my mood at the time I write it.

As Betty Davis said in All About Eve, "fasten your seat belts it's going to be a bumpy night", only in my case it's going to be a bumpy ride! And that's okay. 

Another great quote is from Parenthood the movie when grandma tells Steve Martin that "life is like a roller coaster". And it is. So if you want to go on this ride with me you are going to need a seat belt!

I'm here because I want to be

Going back to school is important to me. It's something I have always wanted to do. I have an associates degree from 1987. I've taken a few classes after that and then the last five years I started taking some english classes until I decided it was time to go back full-time and finish. Get my degree so I can teach.

That being said, it has been a very hard journey for me, and this is only the fourth week. 

Despite getting the associates degree, I have had very limited schooling. We moved around constantly as a child (usually for no good reason) and were usually in two different school each school year. We didn't go from one school to the next either, there were several weeks of missed school between schools.

My mother said on at least one occasion that if she had known when the rapture would be, we wouldn't even go to school. So education was not a priority in my house growing up.

The year I was supposed to be in 5th grade my parents decided they knew their rights and pulled us out of school and bought us correspondence courses. But it really had nothing to do with their rights as much as selfish desires of both parents.

I had not been a strong student with the help of a teacher, it was nearly impossible without one.

My husband praises me for my accomplishments, but I don't feel accomplished. I feel ridiculous most of the time. Ridiculous because I am having such a hard time and I am doing it to myself. I want to be here, but I am afraid of failing. Of not being good enough.

What does it matter? I try to remind myself. I'm doing it. But it does matter, and it is just something I have to work through.

It is interesting to me how I can be out of crazy situations for years, I've been married almost 32 years, but then I stretch out of my comfort zone and like a rubber band I feel propelled backward to the cesspool of feelings from the past.

In a particular class I'm taking, the professor keeps telling the students not to be afraid of being wrong. Take a chance, what is the worst that can happen...

Funny story, when I was a child my mother would often tell me, "it's better for people to think you're stupid then to open your mouth and remove all doubt".

I'm going to end it here today and just let that sink in.

Directions anyone??

I left class today and walked from the valley toward my car. The valley is simply that...

A little sunken area of land nestled in the middle of the college. Scholarly buildings guard the shaded seating areas in silent reverence. Anderson University is not a large campus and it has quiet charm just as you'd expect. 

It is really a lovely campus.

Sometimes I like to just walk around The Valley on my way to class or afterward. It's only about half a mile round trip from the center of The Valley to my car, but as you can see from the picture the gentle hills make this a very pretty walk.

But as I walked I thought about the class I had just left. Educational psychology. I felt small and unnecessary. I thought education was supposed to make you feel empowered? Why is it then that I only feel more insignificant?

Some days are like that. 

Today is better. As I write about my struggles with my place in intelligent society, I realize that today I don't feel quite as irrelevant. 

A little bit about me

What was I thinking?!

When I was first married I worked for my mother-in-law. She sent me to secretarial school. I earned an associates degree in 1987. After that I took a few classes at the college in our town, then we moved from Louisiana back to the midwest, Indiana. I took a political science class at Ball State in 1991. During finals, I found out I was pregnant with our first and only child.

My husband encouraged me to go back to school but I thought it would be to much, trying to take care of a child and going to school. After all it's not just going to class, it's the countless hours studying. 

I kept saying I'll go back when the time is right. 

Fast forward 24 years. My son has graduated college, and has a job. He's moved out of the house, sniff, sniff. My husband does a lot of traveling. It is not unusual for him to be gone two or three weeks in a month, and then he may be home for a month or two. 

So I guess if the there is a good time it must be now. And here I am back to school. Trying to get an education degree with a minor in reading. 

For sixteen years I was a substitute teacher, then I was hired as a para full time. In case you don't know what a para is, I didn't, it is an individual who works one on one or with several children with disabilities. I worked with children who were in the general education class room. 

The teachers I worked with as well as the principal of the school encouraged me to go back to school and get my degree. They think I would make a good teacher. I think they could be right!

Anyway I am going to try to find out. 

I transferred in with 21 credits. So I am a long way away from graduating. So stick around we are in for a bumpy ride!!