Your Turn to Learn

I had attended the University of Minnesota for two years when I married my husband in 1949. Although he was working full-time, he was able to attend graduate school part-time while working on his PhD. We had purchased a large house with a couple of mortgages; we rented out all four of the bedrooms on the second floor to college students who made the mortgage payments.

When my husband finished his course work for his degree, he accepted a position at South Dakota State University in Agricultural Economics. We moved, but Brookings would be close enough for him to return and confer with his advisor while working on his thesis. After one of our children got settled into school, we moved again to a house which we purchased and again rented out rooms to students. We also worked on a new house just for us. After all this moving about, I began to think I should finish my education. What if something should happen to my husband; I would need to be able to support my family.

Not only did I feel the need to be able to support our children, but I also started feeling inferior about our social position. Most of people we knew were university graduates. I was an only child and my parents would have loved to see me graduate; they each had only finished the eighth grade. Therefore, I wrote for my transcript and went over to the Office of Admissions.

I chose the local college so I could commute. Even though my husband was on the staff, he was never my professor. Since my children attended school, I decided to major in education so that my family’s vacation times would match. Because I had majored in economics, the number of credits that I had already earned would complete my subject major. At that time, most schools did not offer full-time teaching positions in economics. I did not face that problem with English. So I chose to minor in it and obtain my teaching certification in that area.