after just one hundred twenty days

 One of the most remarkable transformations that has ever occurred in my life is mostly invisible from the outside, and only those close to me are aware of it. I'm not quite sure if it was a metamorphosis so much as perhaps the actual birth of self-efficacy, and the confidence that brings, which began the day I walked into the administration building on this campus and registered for college classes at the age of forty-three. 

All of my life, I have passionately longed to someday join the ranks of the erudite, an ambition I thought would be forever beyond my reach. I am a long, long ways from even approaching that company, but what has changed is my belief that it is impossible.

I can’t remember a time it wasn’t there, this all-consuming desire to learn. It was there before I could read, and I waited with great impatience for the magical age of five when I could achieve that coveted goal. Accomplishing that first step only fanned my aspiration into a burning flame of craving for any and all knowledge. There is no difference between that early appetite and the hunger I feel now; each new fact, skill, or experience grasped only intensifies my greed for more. Likewise, the motivation that drove me to read the encyclopedia at an age when most girls were giggling over their boy crushes and imaginary weddings has never dimmed. Thirty-something years since I was that little girl, I still spend endless hours on my quest for academic advancement. 

Nevertheless, desire and motivation were beating their wings against the bars of perceived inadequacy and inability in a cage of fear deep inside my being. There is no way to express how real that fear was, or how isolated I felt because of it. When I had begun to gather the courage to consider going to college, I tried to communicate my utter lack of confidence to a few close friends and family members, but they quickly dismissed it with assurances that they had confidence that I would succeed. While comforting, their affirmation did little to convince me, because I considered their kind words just a fruit of their love for me. I treasured that, but I was sure their confidence in my ability was mere bias. While it failed to alleviate my anxiety, it did give me just enough tremulous fortitude to apply, and then, after being accepted, to register.

For the most part, these deep-rooted fears had a legitimate premise. My education up to this point, other than being taught to read, had been almost completely self-administered. My formal schooling, with actual age-appropriate curriculum and workbooks, was exactly two and a half years long; I began first grade at age five, and when I completed the first semester of third grade, at the mature age of seven-and-a-half, my parents decided I’d had enough of a foundation and set me adrift on the nebulous sea of Learning What Interests You, otherwise known as “unschooling”. 

This method of education seems to work well for some parents who actually provide unlimited access to opportunities for their children to advance in their selected interests, while still furnishing basic instruction in necessary skills such as grammar and math. That, however, didn’t happen in our house. Not only were grammar and math instruction abandoned, interests were severely limited by my father’s strict belief system. We were not allowed to read any fiction, fantasy, or subject matter he disagreed with, which was considerable. We were forbidden to engage in imaginative play, games, and sports of any kind. We did not have toys. Our instruction was largely on the Bible and my father’s worldview, and our activities were learning life skills like cooking, sewing, housekeeping, building, engine repair, and gardening.

When I was nineteen years old I took, and passed, the GED. That menacing fear inside, however, precluded any consideration of attending a regular institution of academia; after all, the GED was all multiple choice, and in my opinion, passing it just meant I was a pretty good guesser. I felt no hope of being able to do the actual work. The only option I saw open to me was Bible school, for which I was well prepared. I applied, and was accepted, to a small Bible college far from home. 

I did very well my first semester, but that seemed inevitable since I had studied the Bible ever since I had learned to read. The real challenge arrived with the second semester and the mandatory English class. I was completely ignorant of the rules and terms of grammar; the little I had learned, over a decade before, had long since fled my memory. Bleak and wintry, the familiar fear clutched my heart in its icy embrace, and I wondered how I could bear it if I failed, a very real possibility to my mind.

Eventually, the chill of fear replaced with hot shame, I summoned the courage to tell the professor about my complete lack of grammar in a desperate attempt to find a way to keep from failing. With unmitigated kindness, she offered to give me extra work which would earn extra credit if I was willing to do it. I took all the extra work she would give me, and, fortified with hope, sacrificed what was left of my pride and asked some friends for help. I needed a tutor, and they needed a tailor; after a couple hours over clauses and verb agreement, I’d exchange my pencil for a needle and alter their suits. Due to the flexibility of a wonderful professor and the generosity of my friends, I finished the grammar portion of the class with a C+. 

Later, I married one of those boys who had been a willing tutor, and my dreams to keep learning what I didn’t know shifted in priority as my babies arrived. I harbored the hope that when they reached school age, maybe I could go back to school. Life is full of unexpected twists; I did “go back to school”, but not at all how I had planned. That boy who had taught me the very basics of English grammar was now the father of my children, and for numerous reasons, he wanted me to teach them myself. He, knowing better than anyone my limitations, still had enormous faith in my ability to do so, a faith matched only by my fear. 

But I loved my family, so I began the overwhelming task of preparing myself adequately to teach my children. Nights, weekends, and summers, I researched and taught myself. I found a rigorous, college-prep academic curriculum with extensive teacher materials to use. Always staying one step ahead of my children, I mastered things I had always wondered about, something that filled me with joy but also, as I discovered more and more things I'd never learned, kept the anxiety alive that I wasn’t adequate, didn’t know enough, wasn’t smart enough. The ever-present, underlying dread that I might compromise my children’s education drove me relentlessly, day after day, to keep learning, keep pushing myself, keep requiring more of myself than I thought I had. The constraints of time and energy limited my efforts by the time my oldest finished fifth grade; consequently, each of my children was enrolled in an excellent video academy beginning at sixth grade. I now consider myself as smart as a fifth grader, because over the past fifteen years I have taught kindergarten through fifth grade three times in a row. And yet, the insecurity never lessened, the fear never subsided.

Until, one hundred twenty days ago, fighting panic the whole way, I forced myself to attend orientation and meet with an advisor. Walking out the door later on, with the papers in my hand as proof that I was, at last, a bona fide college student, I felt the first surge of anticipation that my ambitions might actually be realized some day; just a glimmer of hope, but enough to scald my eyes with hot tears and make my heart beat fast. 

The day I picked up my books, I cried again. Every autumn for fifteen years I have opened boxes of new books for the kids, and loved the crisp feel of them, the heady smell of the paper; but these...these were my new books. My books, for my classes. In the bookstore, I managed to portray the appropriate demeanor of a middle-aged woman, but once out in my truck I hugged the books to myself fiercely and breathed in the fragrance of the paper.  I counted the days until my classes opened. It seemed an eternity from July 1, the day I registered, to August 25, my First Day. I spent hours on my first posts and assignments, nervous about whether I was understanding the instructions right, wondering if what I wrote made any sense. With almost unbearable impatience, I waited for my first grades, to me the true test of whether my deep-seated feelings of inadequacy would be confirmed. Would this be my first of many, or first-but-last, semester?

Finally, I began to get feedback; to be sure, a few scores on quizzes and tests that were not so great, but, to my amazement, far more good grades than bad. Not only good grades, but encouraging and complimentary comments as well. At last, I could begin to allow myself to believe that I am not hopelessly stupid. I was looking at what seemed to me more credible validation than all the confidence of my family and friends: absolutely impartial instructors evaluated my work and deemed it acceptable. Fellow learners expressed appreciation to me for writing posts that they considered valuable contributions to the class. Real teachers, at a real school, gave me A’s for my mid-term grades. 

Suddenly, the sharp disappointment I'd felt over the few quizzes and tests on which I had not scored perfectly faded into acceptance. I'm not going to do work that is impeccable all of the time; my classes will get harder and harder, and I'm going to make mistakes, probably lots of them. I will likely spend many frustrating hours in the years ahead grappling with new concepts. Improving myself will always be my goal, but the skills I have and the effort I make right now is good enough. 

How can I even describe the contrast between my former paucity of self-confidence and my newfound conviction that I can, indeed, do this? I can do this! I know, now, that I will succeed. Whatever it takes, I’ve got that. I don’t know exactly what happened to the cruel, inexorable cage inside that threatened to keep desire and motivation imprisoned forever, but it is gone and they are flying free. Some day, I will don a mortarboard and gown, and I will graduate for the first time in my life. I might be fifty before it happens, but it will happen. It is never too late, and you are never too old, to triumph over fear and doubt.