Your Turn to Learn

I went to see an advisor, and we began to work out my schedule; I decided that I could not go full-time and still take care of my family and keep up the social schedule of a professor’s wife. I also discovered that I was pregnant. What should I do? Our house was raised on one end, so it was decided that an apartment could be built on that end. My husband and a couple of his graduate students finished the work by the time school started. After the inspection, it was listed for rent at the student housing office with the statement that the renters would take care of a child for part of their rent. The day after the advertisement posted, a young man and woman, who was very pregnant, appeared at our door. On top of this, I still served as a den mother for my son’s cub scout troop, served my turn in the girl scouts for my daughter as well as her 4H. They both were taking piano lessons so that was another thing scheduled in as well the faculty affairs I had to attend as a faculty member’s wife. I gave up my weekly bridge game, my church women’s programs, my morning coffees with the neighbor women. Was it worth it? As I walked across the stage in 1961 to receive my diploma, my youngest son sitting in my mother’s lap pointed at me and called, “That’s my Mommy!”

I taught for two years in South Dakota; every summer my husband had been getting National Science Association grants to work on a post-doctorate masters degree in statistics. When he finished it, he was offered a foreign service assignment to Nigeria where he set up an agricultural census bureau. Our oldest child had to attend boarding school, and the other two boys attended local British schools. I had a household staff of four. I accepted a position in a Nigerian girls secondary school. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE! The head mistress was a well-known person, and I was an American with a degree. I had tea with the first lady (the wife of President Asakwe) when she visited the school. I also saw one of the Prime Minister’s wives (He was a Muslim with four wives) plus other dignitaries. We were there for four years through government takeovers. I understand now how people must feel in similar situations today–tanks and soldiers in the streets, planes flying overhead, occasionally dropping a bomb.

Yes, completing my education was worth it.