Who I Am: Lifelong Nerd

There’s a reason I call myself a “Word Nerd”. I am an unashamed lover of learning, books, and color-coded note cards. It’s a good thing, because I spent my first three decades in school, taking notes and fretting over tests. Now, here I am in my 40s, a stay-at-home-mom with two Master’s Degrees and but no career to speak of.  But I finally see that all the stops on my convoluted educational journey contribute to where I am right now. And where I am is great. But first, the beginning…

Class of 1989

I went to high school in Fairfax County, a wealthy district in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. I had a fabulous secondary education to prepare me for college, and since Virginia has several excellent universities, I did not look far to find an undergraduate home. In fact, I only visited three schools and applied to one, UVA, early decision. While my friends freaked over applications during the winter of our senior year, I sat back and smiled. I was a Wahoo by November.

[Aside: My oldest child, a junior, is now looking at schools. He only has three on his radar, and I’d like him to explore a fourth. He’s like, “Mom, these schools have what I want, and I’m pretty sure I can get into two of them.” Perhaps I should let it rest. Everything worked out okay for me, right?]

When I started at UVA, I wanted to teach. The school of education had a great program: study five years and get a Bachelor’s Degree from the College and a Master’s in Teaching. I loved my classes, but as I spent more time in schools, I got the uncomfortable feeling that education wasn’t the right fit. What did capture my passion was teaching aerobics for the UVA rec department. I believed (and still do) that exercise has the power to change lives, and I loved getting people excited about fitness. Also, my mom had a few rounds of physical therapy for her chronic illness which spurred my interest. So I gobbled up information about anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology with thoughts of pursuing physical therapy. When I graduated from UVA, I had a fiance going to med school, so I decided I would teach and earn income while he was in school and look into PT when he finished. Ha! Enter reality here.

Um, I’m Going Back to School

I took a job teaching special ed in a public school, and although I loved the kids, the administration wore me down. I came home most nights crying over lack of support and programming, and I couldn’t handle the ten million different jobs a teacher has to do every day. After a year of spinning my legs in a system that didn’t help my students, I couldn’t teach anymore. Husband was already attending MCV’s med school, and all I (the English major) had to do was take chemistry, physics, statistics, and physiology to apply to MCV’s PT program. No sweat, right?

I’ll never forget my father’s reaction when I told him I wanted to go back to school:

“I thought we were done.”

Sorry Dad.

In May of 1995, I cleaned out my classroom and started prerequisite course work. A moment of insanity prompted me to take physics over the summer, so I had a full year’s worth of physics curriculum smashed into twelve weeks of classes.  More crying ensued; physics rocked my world. With extensive help from hubby (the math & science guy), I survived physics, and my other classes, and went on to MCV’s PT program. Sadly, my mom died early in my prerequisite year and never knew that I went on to a career that enabled me to help people like her.

Hubby and I spent our 20s learning about anatomy and health care reform.  We scraped by financially with loans, coupon cutting, and generous help from our parents. PT school challenged me as nothing else had: I struggled with on the spot problem solving and had to will myself not to pass out while dissecting cadavers in anatomy lab.

On the day we cut the brains out of our cadavers for the following semester’s neuroanatomy class, I lost it. My mother’s death was fresh in my mind, along with the autopsy ordered of her central nervous system. As the saws revved in the lab, I imagined what the pathologists had done to get samples of my mother’s brain and spinal cord, and I couldn’t stay. My kind professor allowed a rare day off.

Life Since School

After graduation from PT school, I worked at a fabulous children’s hospital in Norfolk with brilliant people who taught me so much about pediatric physical therapy. A year in, I had my first child and switched to part-time. When hubby finished his medical training (a total of seven years for family practice), we moved to the mountains of southwest Virginia for a taste of life away from the suburbs. He also got loan repayment, a huge bonus. I worked part-time PT, doing home health and school visits, until my second child kept getting sick in day care, and I decided to stay home.

Mommying consumed my attention until my youngest hit kindergarten. Once I had breathing space, an old interest popped up. When I learned that Stephenie Meyer wrote Twilight while waiting for her kids at swim practice, the English major in me awoke. Now I’m a student again, although on a much less rigorous program of study than I took in my 20s. I scour writing books and journals and attend conferences when I can, working around my primary role as mom. And of course, I write. Not every day, but enough.

I used to worry, and some careless remarks from others reinforced my fear, that I wasted all the time and money I spent on school. But finally, after years of feeling conflicted, I’m embracing my choice to stay at home and use my education in atypical ways. I’m a mom, a writer, and a coach, and my studies of English, Education, and Physical Therapy have informed my ability to do those jobs well.

You don’t have to be a student to learn, and you don’t have to have a career to be valuable.

Some closing thoughts on education:

• It’s hard to know what you’re going to do with your life at age 20, so make the best choices you can and be open to change. (As long as you are actually pursuing a degree or career and not loafing on your parents’ couch).
• Let your nerd flag fly and keep learning. (I’ve got highlighters and note cards in my back pack. Do you?)
• Never stop seeking to apply the things you have learned.

What have you learned from your educational journey?

If you’d like to join the Who I Am project, visit Dana’s blog to learn more.

Thanks,

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