19th Day of Thanksgiving

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot again.

Today (or yesterday) I am (or was) thankful for the education I was fortunate to receive. I didn't always take advantage of it the way I could and should have, but it was there.

I went to kindergarten (circa the dawn of time) at the First Baptist Church of Prichard (Alabama). Then 1st through 4th grades at Glendale Elementary, across the street and down the block from our house. I just read online that Glendale closed in 2008, and they announced three years ago that it would be torn down. I'm guessing it's gone now, but it was a nice school way back when.

It looked better before it was painted white & boarded up. BTW, do you see those steps? When I went to school there, the "handrails," the concrete slabs angled down on either side, represented a major milestone of childhood: you had to be big enough and have enough nerve to slide down them. (I never did. We moved away before I developed nerve.)

In 1966, after I finished 4th grade, my family moved to San Antonio, and I finished elementary school at Thunderbird Hills Elementary. I walked there, most days. According to Google Maps, it's only a mile. It felt longer. (My favorite teacher there—possibly my favorite teacher of all—was Mrs. Slovacek in the 5th grade.)

After that, Sul Ross Jr. High (yes, children, that's what it was called in those days). It was a good enough school, I guess. My memories of it are hazy, my brain awash with a tsunami of hormones. Adolescence was not an easy time for me. I owe a great deal of thanks to all the teachers and staff at Sul Ross back then, for allowing me to continue living.

High school was Oliver Wendell Holmes. It's the round one. Obviously built in the 60s, "the round one" is how everybody identified it. It was (and I'll bet still is) a school joke to tell freshmen to go to the end of the hall and turn right. See, round school…halls don't have an end…uh, okay, moving on…

My spotty college career started right after high school at Angelo State University, studying Theatre. After a year there, my parents decided to move back to Mobile, so I transferred to the University of South Alabama, where I took every Theatre course they offered, then dropped out. That was College, Part 1.

Years passed. I moved back to San Antonio, went to work and eventually got married. My well-employed new husband asked if I wanted to finish my degree. I got copies of all my transcripts, took them around to all the colleges and universities in San Antonio (there are a bunch), saying, "Here's what I've got. I don't care what I major in. How fast can I graduate?"

So College, Part 2, began at Our Lady of the Lake (where an admissions officer casually mentioned that my ACT scores would have gotten me a full scholarship if I had gone there after high school—as I entered the last few years of paying off my student loans). I quit my job and enrolled. Rich got laid off three weeks later. But, since he had seen the handwriting on the wall, he had already applied at Southwest Research Institute, and started work three weeks after I started class. Yeah, sometimes things work out.

BTW, going back to school made me want to kick myself for the way I did things in Part 1. I discovered that ninety percent of making good grades—possibly more than that, really—is showing up and following the instructions. And, also, no matter how I tried, I simply couldn't make my school work take up eight hours a day, every day. I'd read and re-read and take notes and do assignments and RE-read…and five hours would have passed. It might have been different if I had been studying medicine or nuclear physics or something, but the fact is that going to school (just going to school, to be clear, I was NOT working at the same time) is not the same as a full time job.

See that flat area between the buildings? That's a second-story
 courtyard, and I spent many happy hours there, studying. There's a
big loquat tree on the other side, away from the camera, and you could
tell how far down students could reach by how far up the ripe loquats
stopped. Loved that spot!

A year and a half and $8000 later, I finally graduated. I have a degree in Media Communications, from the last year they offered it as a degree. (I also had a minor in—what else?—Theatre, and possibly History, too, because it turned out I had taken a bunch of history classes. Go figure.)

Having a college degree has opened doors for me, and it actually happens to be in something that I've found myself working in over and over. So I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had—even though I wasn't quite astute enough to take full advantage of them.

My very clever niece could have easily graduated from high school early, but said, "It's a free education. Why wouldn't I get as much out of it as I can?"

Wow. Wish I had been that smart!