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Early college days: The sweet kind generous Rabbi had given me a vision that would last for the rest of my life and suddenly one of my old girlfriends (from back before I got sick) "J" was going to the Community College. Now that she was in college she'd slowed down on her rampant drug use and drinking and she was interested in being friends with me again. I was about 20-years old. The Rabbi had insisted that I was a smart girl and he HAD BELIEVED I was smart enough and good enough to go to college. Now "J" was in college. The Rabbi had told me that I was worth something, that I was somebody and I was well worth an education. It hadn't been an issue to him that I was a high school drop out failure because of my sickness. Since "J" was in college now this became my chance to go too! I held onto what the Rabbi had told me with all my might when I approached my parents to beg them to let me go to college. Back then I didn't know about student loans and financial aid. I had grown up poor and sick and isolated in a wealthy family and no one I knew was utilizing student loans or out of family aid of any kind. At first my dad laughed at me and he thought it was a pretty ludicrous idea. After all I was a failure, a high school drop out, a nothing, garbage. However, I kept on with my pleading and my mom started taking me to a private GED instructor. I took the GED test and passed with a high score. Then I asked to go to college again. My father shook his head and he continued to want to refuse such a crazy stupid notion, but he eventually gave in after he forecast my approaching failure. My girlfriend "J" taught me how to drive her car through empty neighborhood streets. I ended up enrolled in the Community College in an odd assortment of classes: a remedial reading class, a remedial English class and a top level reading class. Students weren't supposed to be able to do that, but I slipped through the cracks on accident. The college's computers didn't catch the error and I didn't know that I was breaking the rules. I was in remedial classes as it turned out because I had dyslexia. However I also found out that I was SMART after all. The first semester I earned A's in both reading classes and a high B in the English class. In this beginning phase my parents wouldn't let me drive. They probably thought that I wouldn't even make it through the first semester. I could always count on the family for that same form of wonderful support and high hopes for my future. This one reality hasn't changed much yet. In any case, my mother drove me to school and picked me up after classes but she soon tired of that routine. My mom then enrolled me in the Sears Driving School and after I completed my lessons I passed the motor vehicle department tests and I had my driver's license! My dad bought my mother a brand new Mercedes off the dealership lot. He paid cash in full for the car. I got my mom's old Toyota Carola. I continued to make straight A's for years after my first semester, but my dad wouldn't let me go to the University because in his mind I really wasn't good enough. I wasn't college material. I'd been a grade school and high school failure. My father kept telling me that all girls ever did was get pregnant and drop out anyway. It seemed he believed that this trouble was for girls like me particularly, despite the reality that I hadn't even had a boyfriend yet. However, I had been raped and somewhere deep in my dad's mind that must have made me a slut. Besides as far as my father was concerned, I was simply an especially poor risk because I was stamped as a failure and that was final! My years of straight A's didn't amount to anything significant in my father's eyes. I imagined that my dear friend the Rabbi sure would have been proud of me though. It was just like he said I was extremely intelligent. I was smart enough to go to college and make it through. Eventually my father started wheedling about how I could go to the University if I obtained an associates degree in general education from the Community College, but I smelled the trick in that ploy immediately. I knew in my core that if I got that associate degree then that would be the end of my days in college! That's exactly why I'd avoided getting an associate degree thus far! I was dodging it while trying to get into the University. I was after a Ph.D.! I had learned how to be an impossibly stubborn person and in this there was no turning back for me now. I had survived this far simply because I had been too stubborn to die. I continued earning straight A's at the Community College and soon instructors were regularly chasing me down the halls after classes and trying to push me into various University programs. One specific instructor had a friend in a prestigious University who was searching for a research assistant. He had been telling his friend about this brilliant serious hard working student he had that would be perfect for the position and her grades should get her in that school without problems! Plus with grades like hers and the intelligence she displayed she'd pass the entrance exams too. This instructor was talking about ME! I kept forwarding this information to my dad, but in his opinion I still wasn't good enough to go to any University much less an expensive prestigious one! I wasn't college material. Sending me to the University would be a waste of money. |
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