As you can tell from Thursday's post, I was facing some big decisions that would affect the rest of my life. However, I don't remember spending too much time considering the path my future would take during my senior year.
One of the things I was considering doing was becoming a foreign exchange student. But I was kind of going to become rather wimpy about it and request to go someplace where they already speak English. I know those in charge would send me to some other location where I would be forced to learn a foreign language. I considered that possibility and would have been okay with it.
I approached Mom about becoming a foreign exchange student. Her immediate response was "No." There was no discussion, no thinking about it. Just "No." A lifetime of hearing "No" from my parents had taken all the fight out of me. When they said, "No," it meant there would be no more talk about the subject ever again and I would have to live with the consequences.
Many years later, Mom would express regret at not letting me do the foreign exchange study. She said that she was afraid I would get homesick and there would be no way for me to get home for an entire year. I don't know where she got the idea I would be homesick. During my junior and senior years, I spent as little time at the house as possible. I was looking forward to going to college so I could spend even less time at home. She found out the hard way that I was not going to be homesick as I rarely came home for the weekend.
And this led to issues with my other major path choice. I was seriously considering going to Ball State University in Muncie, IN. I don't recall this detail, but Mom says that she had persuaded me to go to Eastern New Mexico University in Portales instead. To the best of my knowledge, I made the decision on my own without any outside influence, but she seems to think that she steered me to go to college closer to home. I basically chose it because I was familiar with the campus and was impressed with the Radio/TV Communications Department and the professional quality of productions by the Theatre Department.
So, Mom definitely played a role in me not going abroad to study, but I told her I didn't think she had that much impact on where I went to school. I know I was worried about how I was going to get to Muncie. I probably would have had to fly, but I certainly didn't like the idea of being there with no car when I had a good one at home. I was 17 when I started the fall 1982 semester. It would not have been a good idea for me to go on a solo road trip at that age.
Whatever Mom did, it did not truly impact my life in the long run. I still had control over where I worked when I left college, where I lived and who I ended up with. Mom was not able to take those important stages away from me.
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