IN HONOR OF WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

 

A TRIBUTE TO SOME STUDENTS WHO ARE MY HEROES

(and still my Face Book friends!)

 

There are some people who feel college graduates are all wealthy and elitist, but this just is not true!  I was 37 years old when I finally received my B.A. Degree (took me 8 years instead of 4). I started with a community college and seamlessly transferred into a university, meaning the education was as good in a county school as in any other university. 

 

Eventually, I worked in Financial Aid (at another community college) and want to honor those students whose struggle was also mine. They have become my friends these unknown heroines:  women like me who raised children, worked, and attended classes because of a dream for a more rewarding life.  

 

I am privileged to know them and thrilled that they all graduated and went on to better jobs and/or higher degrees despite the stress from exhaustion, worry about our children, and often no support from family members or friends. 

 

I had one professor when I finally made it to the university.  He disliked women like me, claiming we “dumped” our children in day care and took up space in classrooms.  In those days, being autistic, I had problems speaking up, so before his class, twice a week, I would enter a stall in the lavatory and hyperventilate in fear, breathing into a paper bag, until I could force myself to enter his classroom. The professor’s behavior is a classic abuse found in advocates of elitist education.

 

Anyway, here is a poem about me in the early days of community college, and believe me, it wasn’t just one bad day, every day seemed to be a Murphy’s Law.  I salute the students I knew, especially at the Brooksville Campus. So proud of you!

 

 

IN HONOR OF WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

Dedicated to all us working-poor students (we rock!)

 

I know the pain of a

Rotting car in the rain

Buckets of rain

Wipers refusing to work

Abandoning the car off the road

Running for the bus

The one that only comes

Every two hours

Trying to get to the

Community College

To take my last final exam

After attending four years

To get an Associate’s Degree

Working, mothering, studying

Running for the bus

No umbrella

Bringing the boys to daycare

Dragging an autistic six-year-old

In the middle of a melt-down

While carrying a three-year-old

Trying to make that bus

Trying to get that degree

Trying to get a better paying job

Running for the bus

All the while whispering

“Please, please, please, please…”

 

© 2015 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: City Bus to Nowhere (Philly legend)