What colleges have you attended?
To give specifics about the colleges I’ve attended would be revealing too much about my real identity. I’d like to remain Batman anonymous for as long as I can. But I will say that both schools I attended were not my choice. Initially. Where I went for my undergrad teaching degree was a school that I got into because I was hoping for a particular scholarship and that school offered some awesome perks with the scholarship. I didn’t end up getting it and immediately applied to the schools I really wanted to go to. The ones in the mountains of my state far away from the home I was desperately trying to escape. I got into all three of them and attended none of them. Drama with my father forced me to go to the original school I got into. But it was for the best. That school was closer to my then boyfriend/now husband who was the reason I survived bipolar hell the first two years of college. It was also a really good school for my degree program and I really felt prepared to teach when I graduated.
The school where I got my masters degree wasn’t my choice either because deep down, I didn’t want to go to grad school and be a principal in the first place. My people pleasing, fear of people being mad at me nature brought me on that journey. But like with my bachelor’s degree, I learned a lot at that school. If I had accepted the permanent principal position that was offered to me, I could have handled it well. Professionally that is. My anxiety would have hated it. I learned from the instructors, but I also learned from the people in my small cohort. To be frank, I was the only white person in the group. The school itself is an HBCU (Historically Black College & University). I learned a lot of things about a culture that wasn’t my own. I still communicate regularly with a couple of the ladies from my cohort and I’m grateful. Those two years were intense and they helped me through it because they were going through it too. Trauma bonding at its finest.
One of the professors in our grad school program continually encouraged us to pursue a phd at the school. We laughed every time, though he was serious. My response was always that dissertations scare me. Maybe one day I’ll go back and add a Dr. in front of my name. Not now though. I’m enjoying my free time too much to put myself through that torture again.
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