There has never been a really firm idea in my mind of what I want to be when I grow up. When I was a teenager, back in the 1970's, this concerned my parents. They wanted me to be interested in college prep courses. I tried those my freshman year and hated them. They required way too much work. So my sophomore year of high school I took general business classes and home economics. Those bored me to tears. My junior year of high school I moved in with my great grandmother in order to switch to a near by school who had this new idea called Vocational Education. I took something called Health Occupations. That class was a blast to me. I loved it. We attended it at the local hospital education building four days a week and on Wednesdays we went to a near by town where the Vocational School was located. Our teacher was Jean Stone. I went to visit her last year before I moved to SW Ohio. She is in a retirement home not far from Fort Wayne. She looked wonderful and it was great to see her again after many years. No voice visited me as much over the years I worked in health care more often than hers. No other person had the influence in forming what kind of nurse I turned out to be more than she did. After my junior year ended I decided that nursing was what I wanted to study. Of course that took pre-requisites - like chemistry. So I moved back in with my parents and went back to my previous high school and attended half days. I worked 5-9 pm through the week and 3-11 pm on the weekends at a local nursing home as a nursing assistant. They paid me $0.85 an hour. We got a five dollar bonus at Christmas. And I kind of, sort of took Chemistry. Let's just say I got through it with a little help from Paul, and Steve, and Phil, and well you get the idea. I didn't do a lot of the home work alone. But I got good enough grades on the homework to pass in spite of my poor showing on the in class tests. So the spring of 1975 arrived and I graduated. The following August I moved in to St Joseph School of Nursing in Fort Wayne. It no longer exists. I tried to find some info about it, or even a picture of it on the web but sites were scarce. I did find an old book about it HERE. I lasted six months. We did have fun. We all had metal lock boxes to put our valuables in. A small bottle of Southern Comfort fit in them nicely. Back then we all had rather big purses. In fact a six pack of beer fit in them nicely. Henry's bar was for gays and in the 1970s they did not card us. It was within walking distance. Of course we had to get rid of the evidence because we were not allowed to have alcohol in the dorms. Once we threw the cans down the laundry shoot. Once we threw them out the window into the teacher's parking lot. They made great noise the next morning when the teachers ran over them. We were all called to the auditorium once and given thirty minutes to clear out our rooms before they did an inspection. I forget which of the above times preceded that event. Once they sent me back to the dorm to iron my uniform. They had large billowy cotton skirts with pleats. My pleats were not creased. Then one day I got my ears pierced. The teacher on the unit told me that I could not be doing my clinical rotation unless I got those ear rings out of my ears. I had just gotten them done and they had to stay in two weeks. I went back to the dorm and called my mom and told her to come get me. I quit. She sat in the directors office with me and they argued with me about how good my grades were and I was almost done with the semester and would have quite a few college credits if I stayed a few more weeks. I said no. I am going home. My mother asked many times but I never told her it was about the earrings.
I went home and got a job waiting tables. I was no good at that. I got in big trouble with my boss because I waited on the table of a farmer before a judge. When he was yelling at me about why would I do such a thing I explained that the farmer arrived first. Then he really yelled and said I must never do that again. I explained we might as well not continue with this employer employee relationship because I will serve whoever comes in first first. So I ended up back at the nursing home and they really needed help and were very glad to have me back. I think I was up to $1.65 an hour by then. But living at home was not what I wanted to do forever and one could not get an apartment on those wages. So after much brainstorming, LPN school sounded like a good idea. My father made me sign a written contract that I would not quit or I had to pay him back the $1000 it cost for him to send me there. I lived at home and commuted. I liked it. I tied with this other girl for valedictorian and no one said a word about earrings as long as they weren't dangling ones. The picture of me at the beginning of this blog is in 1977 when I graduated from LPN school.
They really stressed that we not stop going to school. I took one psychology class at Manchester College after that but the drive was far and I was working a lot. The professor gave me a B but it was a gift. I might have taken English Comp there too I forget. Then I got married and my education halted for a while. I had three children. Time passed. When the kids went off to school all day I went back to school. I was married for the second time by then. I was getting quite a bit of progress as far as collecting credits although I did not know what to study. I did enjoy a mis-matched bunch of courses at Lake Michigan College and IU South Bend. Then that marriage ended and there was no money for school and I had to get a job again. I did take a class here and there over the years.
Sometime in 2002 as my third marriage was winding into a bad condition I decided I wanted to get my RN. Maybe my daughter being in college and my youngest son graduating from high school got me to thinking. I am not sure what motivated me at that time to look into schools.
But that is a long story in itself and that part of the story will be told in Part Two.
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