Dedicate to Dr. N. – my Doc Martens lasted longer

It is no secret I am “back in grad school” at my alma mater, Mercer University. I usually refer to my second graduate degree as “Grad School Part Deux” or some smarty comment. At 44 (really, closer to 45), I NEVER thought I’d be back in grad school. I do not have the “T” on my educator’s certificate – even with National Board Certification. I’m one of those “librarians” who have “S” certification – which means “Service.”

For years, I meant to go back to have the security of “the T.” But life happened. Being in PASS support groups. Converting. Marriage. Trying to have a child. FINALLY being able to have a child. Rearing the child. Being a librarian for 18 years. Divorce. Career ending. Remarriage. Homeschooling the child. Now, the child is graduating and I have freedom papers. What shall I do?

CROSS MY “T” and RE-ENTER EDUCATION!

Oh wow. Life’s been busy.

One thing I have found is fun is to tell “the stories” from my years in education – after all, who can mute me? Here is a true story of my first graduate school “Research” or “Statistics” class at West Georgia College, in 1994…

Our professor was new: she came from “out west.”

Out where?

West – not Dixie.

She was a bit odd – an anthropologist – but I liked her. We shared a connecting cubicle – I was a graduate assistant and often, I ran copies for her. She always said “thank you” and got her own coffee. Any Ph.D. who got her own coffee and provided her own mug rocked in my book. Most of all, she had a great sense of humor. Some people found her blunt: I do blunt well. When she had a problem with something I did for the department, she gave me feedback. It was honest and constructive – and she had never met a young woman in the DAR. She was also the first lesbian I ever met – I simply asked her what her girlfriend’s name was and was she happy?  I had an Aunt Jim – I collected gay men in my life like, well, Aunt Jim did Gone With the Wind memorabilia. She joked I hadn’t had a date in a year: I joked my Doc Martens would last longer than her cowgirl boots. We talked about the South, how I needed to travel more, and we both shared mothers who thought they should tell us what to do. She also wore cool Native American jewelry. We became friends – and then I ended up in her first class.

Oh no. She got stuck with that class – because the professor who was suppose to teach it got tenure and she was the low woman on the totem poll. She had to “pay her dues” in the trenches. She was also young – perhaps in her late twenties – and this was her first “real” job in a university. We weren’t a university then; we were a small college in a small town – made famous by Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich and Georgia poet David Bottoms.

She tried to teach her first class – oh, she tried. But she couldn’t teach a classroom of teachers, librarians, principals, and coaches about “mixed methods, qualitative statistics, and quantitative statistics.” I was lucky, as a liberal arts gal, to even keep a checkbook: the only math I needed to know was the Dewey Decimal System! She didn’t know what to do – so I guess she knew: sink or swim, she had to teach us about statistics and the research methods of education.

At mid-term, the majority of the class failed. I made a D. I still think she took pity on her copy clerk: there is no way I earned that D. But a D in graduate school is like a F – you can’t make a D. She had a roomful of educators who were failing and the class was required on our master and post graduate degrees. Was she failing us or were we failing ourselves?

Her answer to me, one day in tears, “Both.” I just sat there and refilled her coffee cup.I think the quarter she taught me, her addiction to coffee became worse: all I could do was keep getting her more coffee and assure her she was going to be okay. I did mention we had connecting cubicles, right?

In frustration, she brought three boxes to the next class.

“What is that?” one future elementary school counselor asked.

“A box.”

“Smart ass! No, what’s in it?”

I was the smart ass – I already knew: for I had been the poor slob to have to help her carry the boxes into the classroom!

Inside, were human bones.

HUMAN BONES.

Our assignment? Check out a human bone and write a story on it. I swear, to this day, I didn’t put anything nutty in her coffee. Bless her heart, but I had a human fibula in my apartment for a week. My mother, a high school teacher, freaked out when I brought it home for the weekend and teased my German Shepherd with it. My priest demanded I return it (I can still hear him yelling at me). And my father kept reminding me on HIS doctorate, he made a B in statistics and here I was, in graduate school, with a D – and a human bone.

I wrote my short story.

I made an A.

I returned the bone.

My dog was very disappointed.

Father Mac blessed the bone and admonished me that it was wrong to make jokes about human remains.

Mother worried it could be her Native ancestor that got dug up (sorry, Mom, your DNA shows you are 100% European).

The bones had belonged to the archaeology department and yes, I really had a human bone, to boost my grade, in Educational Statistics (or Research Methods – whichever course name rocks your world).

I ended up with a B for the course – the rest of the class was a blur, but the bone stood out in my memory and her constant tears of trying to learn how to teach. As the years passed, I found out how hard it is teach, but in the end, I think we, as a class, learned the content and I appreciate the fact she didn’t “teach” from the book. In fact, she had a great sense of humor and she was kind and helped us.

Tonight, I communicated via email with my new graduate school professor for the new (and second class in twenty plus years) in research methods. I am being “beamed in” to the class on Wednesday nights. I am taking the class via something like Skype, but the class is in Atlanta. I am so thankful he is letting me take the course online and “beamed in” and he seems very nice.  I see he is of a mathematics background – and perhaps a very excellent professor. I am excited, but I’m also relieved this time around…

There will be no bones about it..

Because Mercer doesn’t have an archaeology department.

On another note, thanks to www.ratemyprofessor.com, my old buddy from West Georgia College days is now a professor “out West somewhere” again and holds a great rank – she charges $75.00 an hour on a same freelancer website I use. She also has “been teaching graduate school level statistics classes since 1995.”

It is with great amusement, I would like to tell her: it has been since 1994, dear. I know: who can forget “THE BONE?!” And I guess, after TWO rounds of statistics, I can finally “do math!”

NO BONES ABOUT IT!

BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY! My class, “Part Deux,” starts Wednesday!