For those who follow me on Facebook, you know that I've decided to go back to graduate school next fall (September 2013). I've never taken the GRE before so guess what I'm doing right now? Yup, studying for it.
I was reading some of the essay prompts from the idea pool and one got me thinking: "Scientists and other researchers should focus their research on areas that are likely to benefit the greatest number of people".What if research had not been done for people suffering from epilepsy? There would be no medications or treatments that allow us to live our lives like regular people. I would say that this research started out small and really only benefited few at the time. If research were merely focused on areas that are likely to benefit the greatest number of people, I would be in a mental institution or dead already because seizures are terrifying to watch and were commonly associated with insanity and mental illness AND secondly, because no one would have the necessary know how to help me. Yes, that's a brutal comparison but it drives my point that research is necessary even if it doesn't benefit the greatest number of people. It has benefited me and made all the difference in the quality of my life.
Thanks for letting me practice my prompt, even if it was unintentional. Anyway, I also wanted to post about how learning has never come very easily for me, beyond reading, language skills and starting to learn Spanish through workbooks when I was twelve. Studying or learning about anything else felt like I was like trying to push a block of mozzarella cheese through a funnel. It took lots of effort and there wasn't a lot to show for it. I would read about it, it just wouldn't stick when it came time to test me on it. It didn't help that in the 3rd grade, I stopped being "the smart kid" because I didn't get the math and got discouraged very easily. The school system was fairly poor in my neighborhood and I was home-schooled shortly thereafter from 4th grade through 7th grade. My mom had good intentions at the time, she also had 3 babies within that time too.
By 7th grade I was in a correspondence education program through a private school. I was pretty much on my own in the learning and my mom, well, she could only help me as much as she was able to. I hardly finished that year of school, I basically quit because it was too hard for me to stay motivated and focused. Not when I could be playing with my younger siblings or helping mom stay on top of housework chores and taking care of babies. There was no love lost between me and school. We moved to a better neighborhood with a better school district and so back into the public school system we went.
This was my 8th grade year and it was a tough year. I didn't feel smart at all. I felt like the kids who had been in the system the whole time had the advantage over me because I "missed out" on 4th-7th grade public education. What I didn't realize at the time, was that I had learned other valuable things that I never would've learned elsewhere: life skills, cooking, sewing, taking care of children, yard work, serving other people, developing my own personal spirituality,etc. All I could see what I lacked, what I wasn't good at and how I struggled with school. This was an ugly battle that I struggled with and yet persisted until I graduated from college with my Bachelor's degree. It was one of the hardest things I had done in that point in my life.
I found my natural anxieties increasing and that was no good for my self-image and value. It wasn't fair. It sucked. I was just gonna have to tough it up and keep going. At last we found a medication that worked for me and I started to do better in my classes. Relatively better- it's not an inspirational story yet. I still struggled and just did the best I could even though I procrastinated work like crazy and found it more fun to escape to my books and my dream world. Getting the chance to move to a new state and reinvent myself was probably the best thing that happened to me at that point. School was still hard but I could be who I wanted to be and not feel trapped by my past self. I allowed myself to change to become better.
This contradicts all of my inner workings against schooling and education. Even though I'm a preschool teacher, I've felt like my capacity to learn had been stifled or shorted out somehow. My epilepsy didn't even start until I went to 9th grade and was in high school. This threw a bit of a monkey wrench in the works. I was in average classes as I battled my physiological responses and side affects to my medications. It was difficult and it sucked but I never told any of my teachers that I had a disability. I never made it an option. I was determined to not be seen or treated differently because of something that I considered more of an annoyance than a disability. Luckily, I never had anything publicly embarrassing happen at school or my teen-aged self would've been traumatized.
After those experiences, I thought that pursuing a Master's degree was an idea bordering on insanity. Course work even tougher than my undergrad combined with even more stress. Not my idea of a picnic. Fast forward to now- 5 1/2 years later, I find myself signed up to take the GRE and preparing to apply for Grad school in a Family Studies program. Never thought I'd reach this point but here I am. I now know that this is part of my life mission to get this additional education to help me to share my knowledge of family relations and skills with the world. I hope to become a Certified Family Life Educator (there's a certificate program). I'm even having grandiose ideas such as pursuing a Doctorate.
As I look back over the 29 years of my life, I can't help but feel gratitude for the life that God has given me and the experiences I've had that have changed the condition of my heart to understand more. I have come to a greater understanding that life doesn't work out the way you want it to but in the way you need it to. I have exercised so much hope that God will bless me even when I mess up and turn to him for help. I've seen the courage come when I've needed it in the face of adversity. I've seen myself take chance after chance after chance and fail quite a bit, but persist nevertheless. There are still things I want that I don't have yet, but I know I will get them and that helps me move forward every day of my life. I have more trust in Him than I ever thought possible.
So now, it's the waiting game. Luckily the Lord has given me a timeline set up perfectly so I do the right step at the right time. I can't start applying for grad school at BYU until after Aug. 31st because that's when the new application is available. That's after I take the GRE. Once I'm accepted (ha look at this I'm already thinking I'm accepted- maybe that's a good thing) I can't quit my job at Headstart until the preschool year is over because grad school doesn't start until Fall. The chain of events is just so. I can't do one thing until I've done the other. God certainly knows how to get this to work for me and he definitely has my attention. You think?
1 comment:
Beautifully written. Thanks for sharing, Catie. :D
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