Well, update on the babysitting.  My nephew's wife, a young woman with a baby, has agreed to babysit regularly for my boys until my mom arrives.  I am paying her, but I really can't pay her enough, because she and the boys seemed to have hit it off amazingly, and I am just so grateful to her and to my Father in heaven for the fact that I can have peace of mind regarding my children as I must leave to go out into the world to make my fortune.

I also got a perfect score on the first assignment of the year.  Yay, me!! It wasn't too big of a deal.  We watched a video on the Columbian Exchange.  I took copious notes.  I regurgitated those notes grammatically in answering 5 questions the professor gave us on the video.  Not a big assignment, but, just, here we go!!  I do have an "analytical essay" due on Friday on a reading.  That is a bigger deal.  We'll see.  And this weekend will be studying for the first couple of exams next week.

I wanted to muse upon the past a bit.  When I was in 5th grade, someone finally told me that there was school beyond elementary.  7th grade!  Junior High!! I would be so old!  I hadn't imagined that there was "more".  Likewise, I didn't have an older sibling in college or anything, so that idea didn't come early.  But eventually it was just in the background that I would go to college.  That was mainly because of my academic successes more than anything my parents taught me.  I was 10th out of a class of almost 300; so college seemed reasonable.  My stepfather was a laborer and had no college education.  My mother had a degree, I think, or at least some college, perhaps an associates degree, in "Textiles" you heard me correctly . . . a domestic subject, right? . . . she had attended Ricks college.  She told me once that she couldn't figure out why she hadn't even gotten a music degree, something she loved.  But she hadn't been thinking in terms of ambition, excellence or career.  She had been thinking about being the best wife and mother.  (Which she turned out to be!).  My natural father whom I didn't live with after the age of 8 had gotten a bachelor's degree in accounting.  I actually remember him going to college.  He paid for it from his military service, and for several years while I was about 3, 4 and 5 years of age, he went to ISU (Idaho State University).  I remember when the extended fam came for his graduation.  He did start working in accounting, but after the divorce and his subsequent struggles in life where the long arm of schizophrenia reached up and dragged him under and away from reality -- college was useless among all that.  He never held a job after that.  My stepfather was old school, and he held down a job, no if's, and's or but's.  Never a high paying job, but he left at 8 in the morning, and came home at 5, when my mother would have supper ready without fail.  College education was possibly even suspicious . . . if you had a degree you were probably a pansy in my father's book.  Could you fix a car engine??  Could you use a drill in a uranium mine??  Could you drive truck for a sawmill???  Could you run and manage a bar??  Could you milk a cow?? (All jobs my stepfather held during the course of his life.)  Could you use industrial cleaners?? (My stepfather worked for many years until his retirement as a church custodian).

Meh, anyway, that's a little background to a Mom in College.  I'm sure you'll hear more about that.

Tags: Women Motherhood College

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