Perspective.

When I was four years old, my parents divorced. This is important to know about me.

My dad moved away, and so did we. With my mom. We went to a new town where she worked to support and raise us. I didn't know it at the time, but money was short. I didn't care; I was young and happy.

Four years later, my parents remarried, having realized in separation the weight of their vows to stay together. I was the flower girl in their second wedding.

Despite their reconciliation (and no longer living in a single-parent household), money was still tight. My parents had gone to community college long before; my mom left for wifehood. My dad graduated with an Associates' degree in drafting, but worked with it only a short time, if at all. They married young, and spat out the obnoxious bundle of joy that is my older brother four years later. They hopped from job to job, town to town, figuring things out as they went.

Not long after they separated, my dad went back to school. It took him years to finish his Bachelor's degree in education, working full time and driving an hour one way for classes part of the time. I was 12 when he graduated. I remember the speaker being hideously long-winded. A year or so later, my mom finished her Associate's degree.

Yet even with their diplomas in hand, the hard-hit economy of northern Michigan wasn't handing them any breaks. My dad worked for two years as a teacher in a tiny high school, then was laid off. My mom continued to work in a job she hated for several years before having the opportunity to (finally) do something she loved, was good at, and was actually challenging enough for her (she's very intelligent...I got her brains).

Today, I was driving across town and thinking about my parents, and about me. I often get asked, being young and single and not-Texan, what brought me here. The short answer is "AmeriCorps." The long answer is much more complicated. How do you explain 23 years of decisions that result in a single event? Especially when you're not always sure they were the right decisions?

Sometimes I get frustrated with the choices I made at 18. I chose not to go to the University of Michigan (though accepted), electing instead to attend the tiny liberal arts school that few people in a 200-mile radius and nobody beyond knew about.

Sometimes I wish I'd made the other choice, that I'd gone to Architecture school as intended, instead of getting the Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Business Administration I picked up instead. Or even that I'd picked a school that me to attend rather than the other way around.

And then couldn't find a job in the field I wanted. Which led me to AmeriCorps. Which led me here.

Sometimes I wish I was "further along" in life. That I was making more money, that I was more settled. That I was on track in an actual career, rather than bouncing from experience to experience as I'm prone to do. I look at friends from high school and college, and I envy them. Their jobs, their security.

Then I remember my parents. I remember their determination to finish what they started -- even if it took 20 years to do it. I remember the sacrifices they made (and are still making) to give me this life. Their encouragement to go to school, and to stick it out for four (or 3.5) full years so that I wouldn't be fighting the same battles they did. Of putting their own education and dreams on hold to allow me to pursue mine.

I'm not running a company. I'm not making millions (Lord...I'm hardly making thousands). I won't be able to retire at 40 (if at all). I didn't go to an "elite" school. I didn't even know what sushi was until (late) high school.

I guess I don't have much to brag about.

Well, save for the ability to actually do what I love (even if I landed there through a roundabout way). And 24 years of ridiculous, awesome, and humble experiences that have made me who I am. And two amazing parents who love me, support me, and didn't hand me the world, forcing me to find it for myself.

So eat that, you ivy leaguers*.









*UofM people, I'm sorry. I love you. Oh, and you one Harvard person. I love you too.