On Persistence

     I woke up this morning thinking about my mom. It has been three years this week since she left us so I have been thinking about her a lot in recent days. I miss her. But this morning I was thinking about how she would have reacted to my “breaking up” post. I think she would have shook her head at me and, after a rant about how the academy is an “old boys club”, she would have asked me if it was a good idea to close the door on any possibilities.
     Raised on a dairy farm in upstate New York, my mom followed in her mother’s footsteps, graduating from Cornell with a degree in Home Economics. She once told me that only “rich kids” got a liberal arts degree, and most of those girls were only there to find a husband. She would say this with great contempt, which I now find ironic as she did find a husband while getting her degree. She worked for a brief time for the extension service before she began to have children, but then, sometime after I was born, while my dad was working at MSU, she decided to get a masters degree.
     While I was in school she worked as an instructor in Family Ecology at MSU, I think she was an adjunct as she also taught classes at Eastern from time to time. She worked in a few different areas at the academy and eventually she moved into primarily doing development work. (Much to my chagrin, in the early 1970’s, she and my dad taught the first class on human sexuality at a public university – with a great deal of fanfare, so EVERYONE in my little high school knew about it.) I know that she always felt like a second class citizen in the academy, because she didn’t have a PhD – and only people with a PhD got any respect. I am paraphrasing here, but I know that the wounds ran deep. She did a presentation at a conference once and when she got home she was livid. Some man had commented to her that “it was nice that her husband let her present his work”. But it was HER work, HER research, findings and paper, not his.
     So what is my point? I guess that she found her own path within and outside of academia. She didn’t want to take the time to get a PhD because she was too busy helping the women of developing nations. She was out there doing the work; spending long hours getting to those who needed the help most, while others were getting their PhDs. She worked all over sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America, and Asia helping women to become self-sufficient.  
     And when she wasn’t out of the country, she was sitting in her favorite chair, with sports on the television and someone’s dissertation draft in her lap, glasses perched in front of her sparkling blue eyes, red pen in hand, helping others to get their PhDs. Yes, she would have shook her head at me and told me not to give up. That I can do anything I set my mind to, despite what I might think right now. And that I have a roof over my head, shoes on my feet and food on the table. End of story. All of this despite her disappointment that I am not, nor have I ever been, a star singing on Broadway.