I think the importance of education did not affect me until I was in my twenties. I grew up thinking the most important thing to me was theatre, my dance company and art classes in high school. I was always doing something artistic. My group of friends were artistic also. They are still to this day painting and selling their artwork. I enjoyed school for the social aspect but I didn't find anything interesting except maybe english class. In grade school I loved when we had to draw pictures and write stories to go along with them. My friend Karen and I wrote stories about a country family and their relatives and even created all the drawings to go along with it. I still
have the drawings but not the stories. I just couldn't get enough of trying to express myself through some form of art. I lacked interest in other aspects of schoolwork like science and math.
My family didn't seem to actively voice an opinion on the importance of education. It was just a given that you had to go to school. Eventually you must go to colllege and seek an education in something you can utilize for employment. I look back now and find that to be odd because of the accomplishments in education all my relatives before me have made. I would have thought they would be more adamant about how much good a successful education can bring to your life.
As I mentioned in my personal history, I come from a long line of women who chose careers where they are caregivers. My mom's mother was a nurse and my mom chose that career also. In the Mountain Arts Foundation magazine called "Goldenseal" they did a write up about my grandmothers experience attending a training school for nurses in Fairmont called the Cook school. This name was eventually replaced by Fairmont General in 1940. She became interested in nursing when her sister was affected by the big polio epidemic in Monongah. You could enter nursing school without a high school education. Since her father died when she was young and left her to help her mother care for her five brothers and sisters, my grandmother knew she'd be good in nursing. You couldn't be married and in the program so my grandmother kept her marriage a secret successfully. There was a Tuberculosis scare that made several students drop out except my grandmother and one other girl. They did not pay tuition except $20 for uniforms and textbooks. She ended up working as a nurse for 44 years. Her first job she earned $5 a day. I found that to be an amazing story of perseverance towards an educational dream.
My mother graduated from WVU with a bachelors degree in nursing and received her license to practice as a registered nurse. She worked in the neonatal unit at Charleston Memorial and when she was 40 she went back to get her masters in nursing. She is what I consider a lifelong learner. She became an educator/counselor on childbirth at the family resource center. After her scare with breast cancer the state and CAMC offered her a job as a part of the breast cancer/health education program. She and I flew to San Diego one time to speak about our experience as a mother and a daughter going through the crisis of breast cancer. It was really rewarding to speak to a large room of people who wanted to share our experience. My mother than wanted to go back to school to become a nurse practitioner in womens health. She finished the course and was going to take the test to become certified when my father became ill and needed her care. She doesn't regret her choice to not become certified because she had already accomplished so much. She is now retired but does work part time for the breast and cervical cancer screening program. She's just not ready to give up her opportunity to pass her knowledge on to people who need her help.
My father was involved as an educator for thirty years. He graduated from WVU in physical education and received his masters in English. He worked as an english teacher and coached basketball at Horace Mann Junior High School in Charleston. He then became Vice Principal at Dupont High School for the next twenty years. He always used to threaten my sisters and I if we didn't keep our grades up that we would have to attend Dupont High School. I dreaded that because than I would be labeled the "principals daughter" That could be socially embarrasing for a teenager. I can remember one incidence that I found touching. He recognized that one of his students was missing a lot of school. He drove way up into the back hills of Witcher Creek in Belle, West Virginia to find out why this girl was missing school. It ended up she was caring for her sick mom. They had no electricity or telephone. My dad contacted people who could help to change her situation and the girl did end up graduating. That incident demonstrates to me that my father believed education was important everyone.
I believe even though I don't feel I was rewarded or punished for grades in high school. I learned a lot from knowing my families experiences with their own educational goals. My mom was extremely encouraging when I decided to go back to school at twenty seven to obtain a bachelors degree. She emphasized that age didn't matter and that I needed to do what I feel will better myself in the long run. Life isn't going to stop changing for a moment so go for what you want now.
As I said I have been doing a lot of thinking about why it took me longer to obtain my bachelors degree. I thought why didn't anyone push me harder to get it earlier. I realized that you have to find that urge within yourself and that all the rewarding and punishing from other people isn't going to make you take that step. I believe that with maturity comes wisdom and sometimes lifes journeys and unexpected turns can bring just as much knowledge as any college or university can offer you. I think our educational system has changed a great deal from when I went to high school. I think there are more resources for teenagers to gather information to plan their future educational goals. If I do have children one day, I do plan to be actively invovled in making sure they are aware of these resources but also encourage soul searching too.