I was in the office of the counselor that was to help me set up my graduate classes. He had just told me all my arrangements with the fellowship was withdrawn and so my acceptance to the university was also withdrawn. I was stunned. I just sat there speechless. I had learned from undergraduate dealings with universities to be patient, there is a way, its is trying to find the path. I just stared at the man and gently said that I had just rented my house, had given up the job for the fellowship, and had packed up my kids and had no where to go but that I wanted to go to graduate school. I told him I had to find a way, I had traveled a long way and I was determined to find a way. I looked at him with the same look of ambition I had had at seventeen when the counselor realized I could not even read but wanted to go to college.
There was a long silence, it seemed an eternity. He had been looking at some papers, perhaps mine, and he set down his pencil and became my hero, tears were in my eyes, he simply said the words I had heard all my life, 'if you want to do it that bad you will succeed."
He set me up with family housing and grant money for tuition. He told me how to get a paying job. I applied and got the job. I would work on the midnight shift for the crises lines. It was my luck that I had already taken the training for it before I had came. The training had been free and I was always looking for ways to increase my skills. The lady in the apartment next to me would watch my children during the night in exchange for watching her child certain times in the day. A miracle had happened again. Never give up. It took me ten years to reach that goal but I had done it.
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