Growing up, I rarely struggled with my schoolwork and in junior high I was constantly on the honor roll and involved in quiz bowls. Ninth grade was a tough year for my grades, which began to look like a bad musical scale as “C”, “D”, and even an “F” made their way on my first report card. The “F” was in my English class (as my mom was a teacher, I will not blame the teacher…..fully). My nemesis came in the form of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.
I could not follow the dialogue, the plot, or my teacher’s questions about the novel. Weeks of frustration “conversations” (I, of course don’t remember yelling) with my parents and tears ensued. To this day, I still shutter at the name Pip. Not long after finishing Great Expectations, we began to read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Talk about a double whammy. While we were partway through the book, we took a test about what we had read. One question included a quote from the book and asked “What is the author trying to say?” I felt like writing “I have no idea,” or “Exactly what he said.” but the thought of my teacher calling my parents for another parent/teacher conference quickly made me change my mind. Being introduced to new grammar rules and tougher vocabulary words, compounded by writing assignments I didn’t understand, lowered my grade even further. If I were to venture into a gray area, I would tell you that my English teacher told me I would never be a great writer. While I can’t definitively recall that, I remember having the distinct impression form our many meetings after class, that writing would never be major component of my yet to be determined career, at the very least.
I survived ninth grade English with a “D”, both semesters, and happily moved on to tenth grade. My grades improved throughout high school. In my junior year, while selecting my senior classes, my guidance counselor pointed out that I would be eligible for the Florida Academic Scholarship, if I re-took ninth grade English during summer school. As you might imagine, this really wasn’t an option in my parents mind, but I also wanted the scholarship. I believed that I should be able to get a good grade, especially if my teacher was one of the high school teachers I’ve had.
You can imagine my shock and fear, as I was later told to report to the junior high school for summer school and that my former ninth grade teacher would be my teacher. As everyone else in the summer class was a seventh- or eighth-grader, not only was I the oldest in the class, but part of the school-day was set aside for her and I to go over the ninth-grade lessons, one-on-one. After getting an “A” for the first quarter of summer school, I was hit with A Tale of Two Cities, another Charles Dickens novel. I took it very personal, but was determined as my scholarship hinged on it. Though it took work, I got through it and completed the first summer school semester with an “A”. I tackled To Kill a Mockingbird in the second semester, and came through that semester with a “B”, helping to secure my scholarship.
Years later, a major part of my responsibilities in my last job included writing; to help write grants, write reports about activities for our grants, and to develop marketing/and outreach materials. One of my articles was published, though my company rules at the time individual's names could not be attributed; my writing (as part of a team with many other great contributors) helped secure several grant awards; and one long-time federal official called one of my reports simply the best, most comprehensive report he had ever read.
No, I probably will not win any awards for my writing and I say these things not to brag, but instead to encourage you. You never know, fully, where life will lead you. Despite what others may lead you to believe or even what you believe you are capable of, I think we should give ourselves a little credit about our capabilities and celebrate our successes.
As I start this new blog and down this new path, I am challenging a lot of constraints I have put on myself and wrestled with for the last five years – who leaves an office job for a yurt? My answer to myself is, “I do!” While I have no great expectations :-) that this blog or my journey will bring me great fame or fortune, I hope to come back to this post years from now and wonder why I even debating going to Alaska for a summer and to see how far I much I’ve grown and changed. I'm sure I will also find many grammatical and spelling errors in the post, as well.
In this and future blog titles, I will not be able to say that I necessarily like or even have seen the movie whose title I am using, but I will include an IMDB link for you to learn more.
Great Expectations (1948) – A humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor.
