They say confession is good for the soul.
Now I’m really more of a private kind of person, but what the heck. My soul could probably use some help, so maybe I’ll try a little confession to see if it works. Just to make it a fair test I’ll make sure it’s a good one too. Here goes – I was a (gasp!) high school dropout.
Oh yes, at the wise old age of 16 I calmly informed my parents that I wouldn’t be going back to school anymore. Coming from a long line of high school dropouts I was quite smug about it too, knowing that they really didn’t have a leg to stand on in trying to convince me to stay.
They were smarter than I thought. All they said was, “Fine.” And that was it. Now I was thinking “How weird is that!” and a small seed of doubt crept in – because as any teenager can tell you, parents are always wrong. For now though I wasn’t going to worry about it. I was free! Well, sort of.
Much to my surprise I found that the wages from my part time job at the corner variety didn’t go very far now that I was responsible for buying my own clothes and such. Yep – in a surprise move the parents cut me off at the knees. Never saw that coming!
The next two years saw me take on a series of jobs that sounded good at the time: Avon representative – not a lot of money there for a painfully shy teenager; Waitress – no amount of money was worth putting up with the guy who arrived falling down drunk and bit my finger like a rabid dog; “Minority partner” in a new start-up with one of the parents (bet you know how that goes) – learned a lot, especially about revenue versus expenses and what “minority” really means in that context.
Then came the icing on the proverbial cake – seven plus years of mindless drudgery as a factory machine operator. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever be able to actually think again when the relocation of mill operations to another town brought this to a merciful close. I was still young enough to be totally unconcerned about declining their kind invitation to move with them, so off I trundled to the local unemployment office.
Remember that little seed of doubt I mentioned? Well, unbeknownst to me it had started to germinate way down deep inside. When I stepped into the building and saw the posters advertising training initiatives to place women in non-traditional careers it burst into the sunlight and took off running. Sort of like kudzu. You know – that vine that took over the south?
Anyway, I met with the counsellor, took their battery of tests, and discovered that I was highly suited to two specific career areas: psychology and computer science. Hello? What the heck do those two things have in common? And why on earth would I want to spend the rest of my life listening to other peoples’ problems? I had enough of my own thank you very much! Besides, computers sounded way cool.
By the time I completed my GED and started my college program I was totally hooked on education. My native curiosity about the world and everything in it had been revived. Once again I was asking, “Why?” Even better, every question had an answer, and every answer led to another question. I was energized!
Fast forward a few years. My manager here at Western was encouraging me to take the CIM program at Ivey so I enrolled, and rediscovered my inquisitive nature and love of learning yet again.
Entering Western a couple of years later as a transfer student (part-time) in the Faculty of Science, I intended to study physics and computer science. Funny thing happened on the way to the forum, though. I took Dr. Mike’s introductory psychology course – Super Psych – and was totally hooked, even while I had to laugh at my younger self for the preconceptions that had set me so solidly against it. Unfortunately life got in the way right about then but it’s still in the back of my mind.
Remember that kudzu? It’s totally rampant now. I’ve pursued studies in all manner of different courses and programs, taught myself a few things through self-study and research, and have an ever-growing list of things I would like to learn more about. In fact, the longer I live the more questions I have that I want to find answers to.
Oh – about confession being good for the soul? I think it really works. I feel like I could take on anything right now, maybe even something like criminal psychology/psychopathology. Now there’s something with a lot of questions!
The writer is a technical specialist for Institutional Planning and Budgeting, Western Information Systems Group.
