All this talk about student loans finally affected me. For I realized that in my early-confused years as a Bachelor-ette of Arts, I didn’t have the burden of having to pay a student loan.
So, I woke up this morning actually feeling grateful.
I would have been a problem for any creditor, as I wasn’t so sure of teaching English. So on the whim of shooting for acting, I bounced about with not much recollection of high school shorthand, and typing that hadn’t been practiced much since then, and I took clerical jobs, quite a number of them.
But I’d heard from other friends that they had a heavy loan to pay off.
In high school, it had been common knowledge that I was bound for the University of Wisconsin. I was already the type. My daughter, as a teen, once asked me, “Mom, were you a normal teenager?” as if to say, “I’ll bet you weren’t”, which was true. I was pre-Bohemian. But I got religion at the fundamental level of understanding in my at the end of my junior year, so the brochures came in, and I started succumbing.
I got a book on Scandinavian Humor by John Louis Anderson, (Nordbook publications) which covered the issue of how kids end up at a good Lutheran college (i.e. G.L.C.). The author mentions that, “during the four years, you spend the time agonizing over why you are there. But there were 25 factors that may have made that happen. I could choose three of them:
#1. Your parents think it is a good idea and will pay for it.
#7. It is more than 150 miles from home. (One hairdresser remarked, it was “kind of out in the boondocks”.)
#19. You are a PK. (i.e. preacher’s kid, and might I add, BINGO!) While everybody expects a PK to act a little crazy, they also expect you to go to a Lutheran college and get yourself straightened out.
And, #25. You believe what your mother told you about teaching being a respected and secure line of work. (Ha!)
I would say that, with #19, the PK, the author elaborates on this as one of the 10 Lutheran college types. It certainly was that:
“an elaborate form of house arrest for errant younger members of the Lutheran theocracy.” (I will add that if you, as a PK, go there, you can pretty well bet you will STAY there.)
There, ‘theatrical excesses’ and ‘splashy rebellions’ are dealt with.
And of course you can’t predict what PK’s will become, anywhere from ‘exotic’ dancer to Lutheran ministry.”
Of course, I went back to teaching when I married, as they never called me when I left off my resume for switchboard operator. The necessary extra credits for teaching were inevitable, but eventually, my husband and I went out to Colorado, and that state insisted I get the extra credits without even being allowed to sub in the process. So, I called in desperation, to both his parents and my mother that we needed money for the out-of-state tuition. I threw in drama courses, as one of the schools I’d also considered before the G.L.C. fliers was the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. And besides, I was paying a hefty amount of cash, so I should get all the credits I could. At last! : a normal college experience, where we both still looked young enough to party with the students. I got a scholarship for theater the following summer.
Upon returning home to the Midwest and having my daughter, there were still a few more credits to finish. So of course, I chose the practical route of theater, with the help of my mom (after a family meeting), who even voluntarily paid for theater improv cards. Another summer scholarship followed after I sponsored a practice teacher while teaching summer school speech.
All this was done without student loans, just nice people pitching in. Now, I wouldn’t recommend this way of doing things to others, any more than I would advise Hannity’s advocacy of rice, beef, and beans. It just fell that way.
Okay, so why was I at a G.L.C.? I think, because in high school, I admired an English teacher, a UW grad, who happened to be Jewish. Later at college, in a very deep crisis, I sought the help of a Lutheran Professor/Pastor, who I’ve figured out later, was very much like her. Perhaps, she taught me the “God Spell”, and he taught me the “Gospel”, in a whole new way…like “meeting Jesus AGAIN for the First Time”, and that “the Universe Bends toward Justice”. He was a friend/classmate of my brothers and also a UW grad.
And although my parents were conservatives, I got on the same Spiritual wavelength, and I’ve drawn on the metaphysical principles they taught, for a lifetime. My folks also kept working, so that I could continue going to school. And when my father passed, I became a "war orphan" and took a trip across the state to secure the tuition remainder from the Veterans Administration.
But I now know, you can appreciate your education, especially as a woman. My Aunt Nettie had wanted to go to school, but was needed at home on the farm. She’d only completed the sixth grade. She had a Zen wisdom about her, which later manifested in a grandchild, who invented a rare medical technique for repairing bones. My Aunt Selma was proud of her eighth grade diploma and put it up on her wall, while encouraging other family member that they MUST go to high school and college. (For more on this, see my link on "Crickets in the Field". Once there, access page 3.) My dad marveled at an elderly woman in our neighborhood, who’d completed college. He told me that in her era, it was highly unusual for a woman to do so.
I can’t say that being a kid’s drama teacher in fine arts schools made me a whole pile of money. Now that I’m a storyteller, who is a combo of volunteer and fly-by-night professional, that it does either.
But I’ve reconnected with good friends who were also at my G.L.C., and my life has been enriched. As a result of a liberal arts education and working in the public schools, I no longer think simplistically. It means as I’ve become politically aware, I’m not duped into thinking that racism, sexism, Tea-publicanism or any other kind of dangerous ism is acceptable.
Selma and Nettie would have been more than happy to go through high school (which I thought was a given) and even to proceed to a “cloister”, eventually to be introduced to the “world” in the form of big city theater, and later, regular state college theater education.
Realizing that, I no longer take my education for granted.
