Congratulations to President Obama!

Congratulations to President Obama!

I was not prepared to accept the announcement at first. I wanted to hear or see two things. I wanted to hear John McCain’s concession speech and I wanted to see FOX news admit it! I have to say that, at least the beginning of John McCain’s speech, when he acknowledged the president elect, was very classy. Actually, he was quite a bit classier that the minions who were listening to him. I hope it’s that class he showed that becomes the Republican party in the time to come.

McCain was probably at his greatest disadvantage the day he announced his running mate. Sarah Palin was a political Judas kiss! I didn’t offer any support of “sisterhood” as I supposed everyone born with ovaries was supposed to in the hopes of the party. Truthfully, I’m neither Donna Reed nor Sarah Connor. I’m not going to bake a cake in heels while I pummel bad guys with a machine gun. The extreme right she appeals to is just too small a group, a greater minority than normal women, Hispanics or Blacks. I unquestionably can find no identification with her.

When I was finally convinced that the results were real, I was moved. Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States. 100 years after the creation of the NAACP, we have our first African American president. I was moved as a woman, as an American minority. Barack Obama is our first minority president. I’m only 42 years old. I could be president if I really do want to. My nieces could be president one day. I know that now.

All of those people in those ads that claimed “I am Joe the Plumber,” they didn’t work to get the republican nominee elected. Why? Well, I am Barack Obama. My girlfriends, of all races, are Barack Obama. My friend John, running mate in the 2004 election tongue-in-cheek write-in campaign, is Barack Obama. We all started from nothing but our people and our moral makeup and are fighting our way up. We’re doing it ourselves and earning the help we get. We’re doing it the right way, walking a straight line, not working without the proper licensing or taking any shortcuts. We are women and men, black, white, Hispanic and Asian. We are straight and gay. We are first generation Americans and sons and daughters of the American Revolution. WE are Barack Obama and now WE are represented.

Thank you for a classy speech Mr. McCain. I hope you hold true to the promises you made in it.

Congratulations President Obama. Congratulations America!

Dignity

I realized last night that one Obama ad we’ve been seeing a lot really hits home with me for one word – DIGNITY. That so sums up what’s missing in my own world, in this country, dignity. We don’t have much of that anymore. Right after 911, we had pity and now we have nothing. We have fear, we have welfare for everyone and we have no dignity.

In the ad in question, the word dignity refers to giving it back to someone whose job was pulled out from under them and shipped overseas. I can’t go back to my last job. It doesn’t exist, not in Michigan. It’s a job in India now and a year later I am still begging for a minimum wage job and being told I’m overqualified because I have a degree and experience. Now I’m not even sure what I’m qualified for. Yeah, I’d give anything not to have to beg, to be able to at least pay my own bills, to have dignity.

I’d love to see American companies who outsource labor to other countries taxed extra for importing their products to sell in America. If a substantial part of the product or service is not American, it should be an import and subject to TAX not corporate welfare.

Just remember that the party in power right now was the source of the beginning of our downfall. “Tinkle On,” oops, “Trickle Down” economics gave to the rich with a gimme-your-vote suggestion that the rich would pass the savings on to the workers. That’s evidence of a failing grade in Human Nature 101. Now as we have become a 2-class society of haves and have-nots, the government has gone further to strip our dignity away. Instead of making attempts to get the decent jobs back, we get welfare.

With my college degree and almost 20 years of experience, I have, on more than one occasion, gotten the earned income credit. The first time I got it, thought there was a mistake. I didn’t fill out the form for it because I thought it was for people with kids, high school grads who couldn’t get a job that paid enough to survive. But that credit is for people whose jobs were outsourced too. That credit is for people making $5.00 an hour less than they were 5 years ago. That credit is for the former middle class. Their way of saying, “oh, sorry about that!”

So there’s the earned income credit and the tax refunds, stimulus checks, twice now, to give back last year’s taxes at the expense of next year. All kinds of checks to buy votes and to tell us our dignity can be bought, whether or not we were selling it.

I had pretty much decided for whom I’d vote in the primaries. For me, it was either/or, but I was planning to vote democrat. I liked Obama a bit better, but the more I hear, the more sure I am I was right all along. What mud you do see on his ads is dried and sprinkled lightly. The Obama ads want you to know what Obama is about. They aren’t afraid of the American population knowing. They want you to judge him based on who he is, not on who his opponent isn’t. The other side’s ads are such heavy mud that you can’t see the candidate. Maybe that’s by design.

They covertly play the race card with “I’ll see your black man and raise you a woman.” Their woman will even hold a gun to your head and tell you it’s against her religious beliefs to let you have an abortion. SO American, there. My own pro life beliefs aside, I don’t have the right to choose your religion.

I know there are votes that side will get with the extreme views, mud slinging and “boobs and guns” gimmick, but I’m hoping that this year, there are more people looking for dignity.

Rising From The Ashes Of A Surreal Nightmare

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at home, in suburban Detroit, Michigan, alone. I grabbed a cup of coffee and turned on my computer. The AOL welcome screen had a picture of the World Trade center. There was smoke. I wondered to myself if that was the anniversary of the Terrorist bombing in the garage, I couldn’t recall. I checked email, planning to read the story and refresh my memory after I’d had my first cup of coffee.

When I returned and fully read the tease line with the photo, I realized it wasn’t the anniversary of anything. A plane had hit the building! I immediately turned on the TV, which I seldom do in the morning, figuring CNN would have up to date information. The rest of that day was a shocking and traumatic blur that seemed to go on forever.

I turned in the television just in time to see the second plane hit. I was screaming, looking up asking what was happening in language one seldom associates with any kind of prayer. I ran to the downstairs living room. My brain racing, I didn’t feel safe in my own house. I was sure the Renaissance Center was next. I was thinking the Sears Tower. How was it happening? Who was doing it? Was this the start of World War 3? I had gone into surreal shock. I called my Mom to talk a little. She knew I wasn’t quite right, and tried to talk me down to get me thinking straight again. Then I called my friend in Cleveland who was from New York and at the time not working, so he was home and alone too. We talked for a while. Then I sent an email to my cousin who was still living in New York at the time to see if he’d heard from any of the family in the City. After watching more of the day unfold through tears that wouldn’t stop, I got a call from my big brother, John after he got home from work. All he asked was “Are you alone?” I told him I had been all day. “I’ll be right over,” was his reply. I don’t do traumatic alone very well. John knew that and came to help me deal with the day’s events.

On Friday afternoon, John and I went to downtown Detroit. I’m sure anyone who lives or works in a large city will agree that the city, any city, was an ominous feeling place to be. People were quiet. We weren’t the only ones there just reflectively walking and gazing up at the tall buildings. It wasn’t cold, but there was a chill in the air, not a real chill, one you never felt until it was in you. The flags were all at half mast and the bell at Old Mariner’s Church chimed nonstop the entire time we were there. The city was in mourning. I needed to be there to mourn with it.

With the attacks on September 11, transportation in the country came to a halt. So did professional sports. When the season reopened for baseball, John and I took a day off to go to Cincinnati to restart the season. Cincinnati had that same feeling of empty, like the sun would never shine on it again.

The mood at the baseball game was not one of being at a ball game, but one of being at a pep rally. They handed out American flags and American Flag door posters. There were rally cries of “USA, USA,” like being at an Olympics event. The music was all patriotic music and I found myself loudly singing along with the crowd to Lee Greenwood’s “Proud To Be An American,” a song I don’t really care for. Before the game began a plane flew over the Ohio River past the stadium. As it did, the crowd dropped to a dead silence, as if everyone was holding their breath until it passed. There is no doubt that we were a nation still nursing open wounds.

In 2001, I saw 21 baseball games. That one is the only one that I really don’t remember much of the game itself. I remember an entire stadium joining in to sing The Star Spangled Banner and other patriotic songs. I remember young men in Kentucky parading in an intersection near the City displaying a large American Flag and traffic stopping as they passed with horns blowing and people applauding out their windows. I remember strangers looking each other right in the eye and giving a comforting smile. That one wasn’t a baseball game. It was group therapy.

Now five years later, I can recall that period of time. That period I lived in. A time I lived through. It still makes me tear up recalling those events. It still sends a chill down my spine and part of me still wants to believe it was a surreal dream. But I’ve been to New York City in the last 5 years. That skyline is physically different. It really did happen.

Time heals the wounds. People mourn and accept the loss of loved ones, we adjust to new rules for travel and a new list of things you can’t say, even in jest in public. But in our minds, in the collective soul of our country, we will always remember that we were raped, violently violated, but we survive. We recover as best we can and move on, healing a little more as each day passes.

Everything Changes (The Bad Things Seem To Change Back )

As I write this, I am two days away from my fortieth birthday. I’m preparing to cross a threshold, to move forward, because there is no alternative, into what is considered my middle age years. I am thinking about my youth years and the world I’ve watched grow with me.

There have been many good things and accomplishments in this world. Man has walked on the moon and gone and returned in the same ship. The Berlin Wall has come down, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disassembled. There are preschool programs for poor children and hot lunches in schools.

But there are the not so good changes too. Kids discover sex earlier without decent education about STDs and birth control. That’s driven the numbers of diseases and unplanned pregnancy up. There is an increase in violence in the streets, workplace and even in schools. There are more kinds of dangerous recreational drugs. Average citizens walk around with registered guns hidden in their pockets so you don’t know who the criminals are. The global cancer of terrorism was allowed to fester until we felt it rape us one Tuesday morning.

Perhaps what mystifies me the most are things that changed for the better and then changed back or changed back and worse. That Cold War when I was born ended and now there’s a real war, as ambiguous as that numeric novel from 1949, with no end in sight and real people dying every day. Efforts were made through affirmative action that started to even the playing field between the races, sexes and financial classes, but with no efforts made to even the playing field in the elementary and preschool area, true equality was never reached and now the program’s head is being called for. The minimum wage has increased, but out sourcing has made even the minimum wage jobs more scarce, especially the ones with any hope for advancement, and inflation causes costs that rise faster than that wage.

My hope is that there is a natural cycle to all of this. That were not living in a pre-apocalypse world, but we are simply at the bottom of a cycle that will bring us back to the better economy, better social climate, better world of ten to twenty years ago. Time will tell. In another 40 years, I hope I’m still here to say it did get better.

Teach Tolerance

I was browsing in a hobby shop in a small town his past weekend, looking at model trains and airplanes, ceramics and painting supplies, pretty much standard hobby shop fare. In the front of the shop was a more personal display by the shop owner which included pictures of his granddaughter, some of his more prized model train pieces and some religious paraphernalia.

Now the religious paraphernalia on display doesn’t generally bother me. My interests have exposed me to many strong religious beliefs. I don’t have to agree with all of them and it’s a shop owner’s right to express his or her religious opinions. Customers don’t have to shop there. I think offending customers is bad business, but there is nothing offensive about a sign that says “God Bless You,” a stack of religious pamphlets on the counter, even stuffed in the bag, or religious music playing on the store speakers. That’s just people expressing their faith. They aren’t forcing their faith on me. I can walk out if I don’t want to be exposed to it. And generally, they aren’t speaking ill of my beliefs, so there is nothing to find offensive.

Last weekend I did see something offensive. Now the cut and dry answer to being offended by materials in a shop is to leave without spending any money. I did do that. On private property, if the property owner offends me, it would be wrong for me to verbalize that offense. So many stupid things make the headlines because people can’t do that one little thing when it comes to religion – respect someone else’s property if they won’t respect their freedom of religion and speech.

But after leaving that store, I was troubled by the feelings I had inside. A contradiction leaving me unsure how to handle those urges within the context of my own religious beliefs. The sign on that display that offended me read, “Teach truth, not tolerance.” My first thought was “Who’s truth?” The first and foremost rule I adhere to in my Christian beliefs is tolerance. I viewed this, very personally, as Christian on Christian hate speech.

I abhor intolerance and that in itself is intolerant. It’s part of my beliefs that has always represented a challenge for me. I was raised to realize that if a religion was too easy, it was probably not what God intended. God gave us rational minds to use them. He never promised we’d have it easy. It would be very easy to convince myself that anyone who didn’t practice faith as I do is wrong and I am the only one who “gets” God. A lot of so-called religions do that. They take the easy way out with a set of absolute rules whose mutable interpretations allow other mere men to tell them what to preach and who to hate. And it is very easy. Its not even necessary to think about God to do “his” work. There is a checklist to separate the saints and sinners. And it’s a big checklist too, big enough that the reader can fit anyone into it and yet roomy enough that they never fall in to one of the check boxes themselves. It doesn’t require understanding a single other human being. It doesn’t require even entertaining the thought that they might not be right. It doesn’t require asking of themselves, “WWJD.” It simply requires telling everyone else.

So, I think I’ll keep to the faith I’ve practiced for the past four decades. No one makes it easy for me. I have to work hard to love my neighbors, to understand and respect them, even when we disagree. I have to forgive shop owners who offend my religion with theirs, because my religion tells me I must respect theirs. I believe that God is big enough to present himself to many people in many ways and so far beyond what simple man can possibly comprehend, that there is little chance any of us are completely right.

I can usually find a meaning in any religious statement that I can embrace in my faith because the intent in it is good. The intent at least makes an attempt at reaching out to God. But that statement was beyond what I could turn to a positive. Don’t teach truth, for “thuth” is beyond the grasp of mortal man. Humbled before our maker, we should be modest enough to realize that we still seek truth and in that, we Christians should teach what Jesus would teach, as he was documented many times doing in the New Testament – teach tolerance.

As Time Goes By…

When I first started this blog, it was to replace “Simply Davine Weekly” from 2003/2004. My first commitment with it was to not necessarily commit to writing in it every week. Well, I WAS hoping for at least once a month! I’m going to try to refocus some serious pondering time, or at least short ponderings of a serious nature, on the minimum regularity of that once a month now!

Please click over to my Yahoo 360 blog for the more jovial and entertaining daily happenings, well a few days a week. As for the Simply Davine’s Soap Box, stay very tuned for a new post VERY soon!

Love Your Pet, Respect Your Neighbors

Alexis Kaline went into heat for the first time last week. We’ll be making arrangements for her surgery very soon. This is not a situation that can be put off long because the next door neighbors have a “pet.”

The word pet appears in quotes in that last sentence because the several years old cat next door can just barely be called a pet. They feed him and there is a kitty door on the garage so he can get shelter if it gets too cold in the winter. This outside cat is not neutered, doesn’t come into the house, and is not provided with the care and protection one assumes an animal referred to as a “pet” would have. Our 8-month old kitten sometimes sneaks into the garage when the door is opened. She is quickly chased back into the house but if she did that when she was in heat and ran out of the garage, just once is all it would take for a kitten to have kittens and increase the population of cats needing homes.

What is a pet owner? Does one own an animal because they feed it? Is that all there is to it? I can call the wild birds in my father’s backyard “my birds” because I threw some dry bread out in the yard. My father can call the groundhog in that same yard “his groundhog” because it steals from his garden every year. No. There’s more to being a pet owner than feeding it. There is a promise to the animal and to society when you call it “yours.”

An animal needs food, attention and veterinary care. Claiming a domestic animal means you will provide for it and keep it healthy, warm and free from parasites. It also means you will protect. You will protect it from harm, from running about the neighborhood and being abused by people who don’t want it on their property. You will protect it from running into the street and being hit by a car. You will protect it from neglect when you are away from home, be that having someone check on it or boarding it while you’re on vacation.

But protect includes protecting others FROM your pet too. The fence should be high enough that you dog can’t jump it and chase someone walking by. A dog or cat should never be near someone else’s windows where allergens can enter their homes. And, for the safety of your pet and other people’s pets, it should be spayed or neutered. There is no reason anyone should have to fear a kitten sneaking into a garage in a neighborhood in one of the pricier counties in the country for fear of unattended, unruly cats.

If you love your pet, spay or neuter it and provide a real home for it. If you respect your neighbors, spay or neuter your pet and provide a real home for it. If you can’t do that, don’t claim a domestic animal as “yours.”

Robbing Children of Their Toys

I have a Roberto Clemente card that was my mother’s. I gave it to her as a Christmas gift and it was given to me as a VERY generous gift from a former employer. The card has an actual, sell it to a hobby store or collector value of nearly $100.

When my mom was a kid she collected baseball cards as did many kids in the early 50’s. She bought the cards, kept her favorites in a special place in the shoe box. She sorted them by team, traded them with other kids, used some of the lesser players for noise effects in the spokes of her bike wheels and kept the rest in sorted piles fastened with rubber bands. Every year at the end of the summer, Grandma cleaned up in Mom’s room, including throwing away at last season’s baseball cards. Mom would start her collection over in the spring.

I collected baseball cards in the same way when I was a kid. Al Kaline and Pete Rose were kept in a sacred place in the dresser, but still Mom managed to find all of them on that fateful off season trash day. I never made a big fuss, I often asked if I could keep them all just one more week, but I was fine with the knowledge that there would be more 20 card for 15 cents packs come spring and a portion of my weekly allowance would support the Topps Trading Card company for another year. The value of my cards as a kid was in seeing pictures of my favorite players and reading the stats and comparing them to what was in the newspaper for the current season. It was a summer learning tool using my favorite sport as a disguise. I didn’t put the non-name players in my bicycle spokes, though. I discovered that on a hot summer day, the non glossy sides would stick to legs when wet. I made baseball pool-pants.

I remember talking to Mom after I was an adult and she and i had both started collecting cards again. A common old Topps pack was a dollar fifty and it only had 10 or so cards. And the book values were incredible! She and I both sought Al Kaline cards at different ends of his playing career. The Hall of Famer’s cards all fetched a decent sum and Mom had once had, Grandma threw out in the off season, Kaline’s rookie card! I lamented all those Pete Rose cards, that in the midst of scandals, STILL garnered a pretty penny at collector shows. Her other hero was Roberto Clemente who’s cards had met that same fate that the Rose and Kalines did. It’s still fun, but an expensive hobby now in which I only casually participate.

Card collecting is not a child’s hobby now. The price is too high and the glitzy production doesn’t allow for good noise effects in a bike or pool pants anyway. It’s adults, treating them like they are golden eggs or highly fragile ancient pottery, encasing them in inch thick Lucite and touching them with gloves so no human skin oil gets on them. In fact, not much is left for kids anymore.

Beanie Babies, bobble head dolls, snow globes – they’ve all been give aways at sporting events and resold in collector shops. Grown women buy and sell Barbie Dolls at top dollar, the older the better. I still have the melamine plate I got in 1969 to commemorate the first moon walk. It was a huge deal to me! I was a kid at the time when space was a new reality! If the first moon walk had been today, adults would have bought those kid pate sets to “put away for the kids” because they’ll be “worth some money.” The kids would never get to enjoy them at the moment of their own present, to make it meaningful personal history and the plate sets, “put away” by the thousands and preserved would be abundant and not so ”worth some money” after all.

That’s the trouble with “collectables” today. What’s left for the kids to play with? I gave my niece a Barbie doll in a Chicago Cubs baseball uniform that had been a giveaway at a Cubs game. Sadly, I watched her dad take it from her before it was even out of the box, to ”put away because it’s a collector’s item.” Next time I give a gift like that, I’ll sneak off and we’ll make sure it gets dirty before her dad sees it. That’s not the first instance of that I’ve seen. I’ve seen parents take the “special edition” stuffed animals away, buy a toy to “put away” and a cheaper one to play with and even watched parents send their kids searching the seats at sporting events before they leave to gather left behind “collector’s cups.”

The sad thing is, as we “put away” childhood before today’s children get to experience it, we bring the value down on all those collectable toys by flooding the future market. The Roberto Clement card is valued so high because most of them ended up in shoe boxes wrapped with rubber bands and thrown out by someone’s mother in the off season. The ones that survived the years have greater value. Think of it, if the average human life span was 150 years, would it be a big deal to live to be 100? 100th birthdays are news stories to celebrate because we just don’t have many 100 year old people in this world. If there are 50 year old baseball cards easily available, tons of Beanie Babies and a Barbie in a Cubs uniform in every “antique mall,” how much “worth some money” is really there?

I think, if it’s a toy, if it’s something made for kids to enjoy, we should abolish that “collector” word from the packaging. Dolls don’t need a “certificate of authenticity,” and the best thing we can do, is take those silly pieces of paper and throw them away. Then give the toys back to the kids and then go play with them. Give the kids something that will REALLY have worth when they’re adults – the memories of wonderful toys, loving adults and playtime together.

Marriage for ALL or Marriage for NONE

As the buds get ready to form on the trees in the north and the colorful explosion of flora starts in the south, many of those who made that big promise on those engaging holidays over the winter or any day in the recent, or not so recent past are making giddy or stressful plans to finalize that commitment in the eyes of the US government. There may be romance, parties or a religious ceremony, but the actual marriage is a legal document. A sadly exclusive and prejudicial legal document.

Marriage is an entitlement saved for members of opposite genders over the recognized legal age of adulthood. It’s not necessary to prove logistics or compatibility, much less the enigmatic love to get a license. A couple merely has to have a government approved combination of genitalia. It’s much like collecting unemployment or welfare. It’s only necessary to fill out the paperwork and if the government agrees that you meet the necessary criteria, you will be awarded the entitlement you desire. Those who have jobs can apply for unemployment, but they won’t get it. Those with an income above poverty and no children, can apply for welfare, but they wont get it. And, same sex couples who are in love and want to be married can apply for a marriage license, but they won’t get it.

There was a time when interracial marriage was illegal, but American courts grew and Clarence Thomas’ marriage IS legal. There was a time when inter religious marriage was taboo, but American society grew and Stephen Breyer’s marriage isn’t questioned. So the culture and laws must grow again in America to include those left behind in the country’s last growth of social awareness and sensibility. One would expect those who have benefitted form paradigm shifts of the past, will be forerunners in not allowing American law to stagnate now.

Any church, in this country free from religious oppression, will agree that marriage between two people who love each other is a glorious thing. The Catholic church goes as far as to call marriage a religious sacrament. Not all churches agree on what constitutes acceptable “love” but they are not the government and they do have the right to decide on how they will interpret “God’s meaning” in their own congregations. Those whose beliefs do not acknowledge a supreme being, still acknowledge that love between two people is a wondrous and much sought after feeling. They too, all differ on what they acknowledge as a fit combination for “love.” In America there is not a preferred or mandated religion, yet so many issues in America are based on religious arguments. It’s unquestionably a conflict of interest.

But the debate, especially the religious one, about same sex marriage does marriage itself a great disservice. It points out the reality that marriage in this society is just a license. It’ a scrap of paper that says an entitlement was applied for and granted. The government, whose courts are quick to litigate divorce proceedings, sees marriage as just bureaucratic procedure. It means nothing. The rings, the vows, the ceremonies and parties, THOSE are the true symbols of union of love, indeed of the spiritual commitment of marriage. As what makes that marriage legal is not inclusive, that license is as meaningful as food stamps or an unemployment check. It’s simply the symbol of a granted entitlement. Perhaps the answer to preserving the sanctity of marriage, to ensuring that it DOES have meaning, is to take it away from the government completely. Perhaps the answer is not legalizing same sex marriage, but making a marriage license obsolete. Let people marry for love and take the government out of all of it. Save the sanctity of marriage: legal marriage for ALL or legal marriage for NONE.

Strait But Not Narrow

The 12 reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong

Equal Marriage NOW

I Never Stopped Starting

I have a very full education, but I took the unconventional route to get it. It’s not that I didn’t want to go right through 4 years of college when I graduated high school, but it was the mid 80’s and I’m the daughter of a self employed construction contractor. Michigan in the mid 80’s was not a good place to be in the home construction trades. For that business and location, it was a recession. As it worked out living with my parents in a house valued at twice what my father had built it for, I was almost laughed out of the student aid office.

I ended up at community college full time and then part time, as my work schedule and tuition money would permit. My plan was that I’d save the money to go my last 2 years at the state university I’d chosen. I was being careful to take transferrable credits. But, even at a state university, tuition is more than one can feasibly save for on a minimum wage job. (Try and find better wages without the degree! Can you say, “catch 22?”) So, after completing the credits of a freshman year, I dropped out of college in favor of a full time day job and a full time night job.

At 20 years old, 80 hours a week is hard, but but not impossible. It’s also ambitious. It’s the age where some people, like me at that time, enjoy the ego stroke of your parents’ generation marveling at how hard you work and being sure you’ll “go somewhere.”

But that way true in that generation. Times change and I wasn’t “going anywhere.” I wasn’t even making what would be a 40 hour check at $7.00 an hour! I was tired all the time and all I did was work. I had no social life. I needed to move on to the next tier “up.”

It was an accounting clerk job and when minimum wage was $3.35 an hour, it paid $5.00! After a couple years at that, I reassessed. It was 1990. I’d been out of high school for 6 years and all I really had to show or it was one year of college completed and 40 hours a week that nether excited or challenged me. Once again it was time to figure out what I was doing! I realized that without my education I’d never dig myself out. I needed something to jump start me though. I’d lost a lot of time!

On my first day of trade school, the school’s founder welcomed our class personally, as he did all new classes. He shared a theory that has helped me retain my composure outside when I was trembling inside in every crucial situation since then.

He told us we’d all be standing up in front of the class, introducing ourselves and telling everyone why we’re there. On the first day! Many members of our class were fresh out of high school, some were entering or reentering school and the workforce. No one was looking to do a public speaking piece on the first day! He smiled and asked how many people got nervous the instant he said we’d be getting up in front of the class. Everyone raised a hand. “Imagine the feeling in your stomach as you reach the top of the first hill on a roller coaster.” he instructed with a confident smirk and an excited gleam in his eye. “Now remember that feeling in your stomach when I said you’d be addressing the class.” It was the same feeling. Just the negative and positive sides of it. As a lifelong optimist, I appreciated that lesson and have used it every time I’ve been nervous since.

It helped my with all of my speaking and ”on air” appearances through broadcast trade school. It was also what gave me a happy and confident air interviewing for my first real media job. Now, I thought, I can conquer the world! Who needs to worry about finishing college?

The truth is, the community college I went to included my trade school as the practical credits for an associate’s degree in communications. I was one class shy of that degree! And, after 4 1/2 years with the small company I’d hired in with as a producer and coordinator, they were being bought out by a larger company. I had made great PR strides for our department with the community. I’d won a statewide award for my production work, I knew the government officials. I trained all of our interns. I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. I was told that I would not even be considered for a position if I wasn’t already there and there was a salary ceiling and no hope for promotions with the new company. Who needed to finish college 5 years ago? I did.

I met with a counselor from a private university with a satellite campus near me. I could take most of my classes at the nearby campus and wouldn’t need to travel. If I went back to the community college for that last English class and used my 4 1/2 years as a producer as my internship credits, I was about a year and a half away from my bachelors degree if I was accepted into the accelerated class program and I didn’t take any semesters off.

I was accepted into the program and gave up 2 summers in school. I excelled at my classes, having the professional experience to build my papers on and the very real world to base my ability to meet deadlines on. I also used some of that ability to stay up late and wake up early that I learned working 2 jobs at 20. I also got high marks for class participation because I knew that I wasn’t nervous, I was excited to stand up and speak.

It was an August afternoon just after my 31st birthday when the package arrived in the mail. Inside the padded folder, it was real, my degree. I never imagined that feeling of pride would be so powerful as I read my name on it 13 years after I started to work towards it. The value of never giving up. I never stopped starting.

That day I really understood what the worth of personal accomplishment was. And inside I felt like I was at the top of the highest roller coaster in the world.