Plan A

As the melody of Pomp and Circumstance comes to a close, as the last graduate walks across the platform, and after the mortars are thrown into the air, your education comes to an end and your “real” life begins. This same new beginning also happens when the echo of Here Comes the Bride quietly ends, and the bridal party leaves the church, and after your dad makes a toast. And it may also happen when your newborn’s cry welcomes you to parenthood. Graduations, weddings, births – all of these mean new beginnings and the end of what is familiar. Change can be both exciting and scary.
If you’re finishing high school, you may be going on to college. Are you starting at the local community college? Do you know where you’ll transfer? Or did you choose a four year university? Do you know what you’re going to major in? After you get a bachelor’s degree, will you go on for a master’s? In what? So many questions. So many answers. But none that haven’t been considered by every generation before yours. And none that yours won’t find answers to.
I graduated from high school 50 years ago this month. It’s so hard to believe. Our mantra was, “Never trust anyone over 30.” And here I am in my late 60s. Those were heady days of hippies and pot and the Beatles. And it was John Lennon who said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” I was soon to discover how right he was - as perhaps you are just now discovering.
There weren’t many career opportunities for women when I finished high school. Basically, you could be a secretary or a teacher or a nurse. If you didn’t want to go to school any more, you’d probably opt to become a secretary, although you still needed some training. Most secretaries needed to be pretty good typists and many took a night course in stenography at least. Stenography was an abbreviated spelling system that allowed people to write down information that was dictated to them – before tape recorders. Anyway, as I wasn’t much good at typing, I was down to two choices. And as I couldn’t even imagine four or five more years of school, I didn’t consider teaching. So, I headed for nursing.
At the time, nurses were trained in what was a three year basically on the job program at a hospital, but a new avenue was just beginning. The community college had just started offering a degree in nursing that took only two years. In order to prepare for that one had to take a bunch of science and math courses in high school which I’d done. And then I’d applied for the new program at the local community college. I had a plan.
For my high school graduation, I’d given myself a trip to the east coast to visit my boyfriend who was in the Navy and stationed just outside of Boston. My Godparents lived on Martha’s Vineyard and would be doing the chaperoning. Things were different then, you know. After visiting with him, I’d planned on seeing my two older sisters. One lived in Chicago and the other in Fort Madison, Iowa. I was going to be gone a month.
While I was gone on my trip, the college called my home to tell me to come in for an interview. My mother called me in Massachusetts. I asked her to call the school back and reschedule my interview. I’d scraped and saved for nearly a year to pay for this trip; I wasn’t going to cut it short.
When I got home and the time came for my rescheduled interview, the woman in charge told me that the nursing program was closed for that year and though I was well qualified, I would have to wait until the following autumn when a new class would begin. It was as if someone had hit me in the stomach – hard.
At 17, being told to wait a year was like being told to wait 10. Years did not fly by then as they do now. Now I would surely realize that a year is not such a long time, but then it sounded like forever.
I’d taken biology and physiology. I’d taken enough math classes to be an engineer. I had it all planned. I’d finish my nursing courses in two years just when my boyfriend would be getting out of the service. Then we’d get married and I’d get a job at a hospital and… That was my plan and it did not include waiting around for a year to get into school.
The woman who’d given me the bad news suggested that I take some of the general education classes that I would have to take anyway, so I enrolled for a few classes. My heart was not in it though and I dropped out after a few weeks. I hadn’t realized there was a “drop” procedure when I left school. A couple of my teachers took pity on me and gave me a W, but my English teacher gave me a D. Why she didn’t just give me an F, I have no idea, but I still have that darn D on my transcript. What next?
But life doesn’t wait for you to make up your mind. And my mom and I got into it about something, so I decided to leave home. I got a roommate and an apartment. We couldn’t even get a phone because neither of us was 18 and, therefore, couldn’t sign a contract. But it was fun and scary.
In order to rent an apartment I needed a full time job, so I quit my part time retail gig and got a full time job at the bank where my roommate worked. Before becoming a teller and then working my way up to the position of GL bookkeeper, I’d started out as a switchboard operator. And while there are still tellers in banks today, the telephone operators gave way to touchtone phones. As a bookkeeper, I used a huge machine called a nine out machine to do my daily calculations. It was a kind of adding machine, these being the days before calculators. It wasn’t long before the bookkeeping jobs were taken over by computers.
My boyfriend did get out of the service in two years, but I’d settled in at the bank and never did go to nursing school. And life has thrown me many a curve ball since that summer of ’65. As it will you. In fact, you can count on it. Just about the time you get settled or comfortable, something will happen to shake up your world.
One of my favorite old sayings is Desiderata which says that the world is no doubt unfolding as it should. It also says that you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees or the stars! Be gentle with yourself.