Old Synapses ~ New Connections

We all know that as we get older we become set in our ways. That’s certainly been true for me, although as I continue to learn about myself, I see that I’ve always been routine oriented. I remember as a child making up a schedule for my summer days: art at 9, snack at 10, TV at 11.

One of the many aspects I’ve loved about going back to teaching these past five years has been the routine: Math at 9, snack at 10, Reading at 11, so when my principal asked me to become Interim Program Administrator for our Primary School (primarily), the change in routine was at the top of my list of concerns.

For five years, I drove to work at the same time and drove home at the same time. Although I had different students, they were the same age and the curriculum was pretty much the same. Although my team members changed some, others stayed the same. I was happy, productive, and relatively successful.

Then came change and Holy Terwillikers has it been stressful! I no longer have a work home as I’m functioning out of two offices and a cloth bag. I’ve lost my tool box and haven’t created a new one. I don’t know how to use the office phones, which doesn’t really matter as I don’t know whom to call for what anyway. in addition, I don’t know how to put out the fires or even where they are or what caused them to begin with.

I have to admit that I took the position mostly for the money, not only for now but because it will add significantly to my retirement. In spite of that, I want to do a good job. I want to be helpful and add to the good of the cause. But other than those two very important reasons, I couldn’t think of any other justification for taking this new job.  I'm no longer climbing the ladder to success.  The rungs are too old and rusty (or perhaps the problem is that they are too slick and new) and I'm afraid of heights.  And so, I wondered if I'd made a big mistake.

But then I remembered synapses. Not long ago I read somewhere (not surprisingly I can’t recall where) that one reason older people lose mental functioning is because they become so set in their ways, so routine oriented, they are no longer making new synapse connections.

This past week, I’ve screwed up and told people wrong and looked stupid and said I don’t know. I’ve gotten lost and said I’m sorry and made mistakes and wondered once again about the Peter Principle, especially apropos to my situation as my very popular predecessor’s name is Pete.

But the good news is that I’m feeling a few synapses begin to wake up from their well-deserved five-year-nap, stretching and scratching their sleepy heads. They’re a little pissy and put out, needing a caffeine boost, but last I heard, they’re in their tiny cerebral Corolla, careening to the firing range, after stopping for a 12 pack of Diet Cokes.

I’ll let you know how they do.  That's if I can remember.

Certified

I just renewed my teaching certificate for the eighth time, which means I've had nine certificates, with this newest one being good through 2016, for a total of 45 years of teaching certification. In the state of Georgia, you must be certified in order to teach in all public schools and most of the private ones. A certificate is good for five years and, at the end of every five years, you have to renew it. The requirements for re-certification usually include evidence of staff development and that you haven’t done anything dastardly to a kid.

But this story isn’t so much about my teaching. It’s about my life. My nine certificates, so far, have spanned 40 years, my entire adult life, and thinking about each one takes me back.

My first certificate arrived in 1971, along with my 21st birthday, my college diploma, and my marriage license. I thought I would teach for a few years until my children came along, and then I would morph into a full-time mom, baking and ironing and donning high heels when hubby came home from work. I remember my mother telling me that I needed to have a college degree in case my husband died and I had to support myself. For that first year after we married, Gary was finishing up Pharmacy School at the University of Georgia and I taught first grade in Barrow County.

In 1976, I renewed my certificate for the first time. By then, Gary and I had moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where we'd had our first born, Melissa, and had then moved back to his home town of Warner Robins, Georgia because his father wasn’t doing well and his mother had just died. We couldn’t sell our house in Greenville, so we lived with Gary’s daddy for about six months. It was during that time that I became pregnant with Billy, which I remember as being a big surprise.  Now, I'm also a little surprised that I bothered to renew my certificate at all,  since what I was intent on at the time was birthing babies and decorating nurseries.  I do remember Gary looking at me in the grocery line one day and saying he didn't know how we were going to make it financially if I didn't go back to teaching.  That's about the time I realized the rules for women had changed from when my mother had given me her college-degree advice, and so I began to re-think my life plan.

My first day teaching after having kids.  Notice the open window.  It was late August with no air conditioning in the schools.

In 1981, during the time of my next renewal, I was teaching full time, I’d just finished my Master’s Degree, and I could tell that something had shifted in me. I was no longer a mother who happened to be a teacher. I was a professional woman who also happened to be a mother. That was also about the time I decided I wanted to go to law school, so I took the LSAT and did quite well, leading me to apply to law school at Mercer University. I was accepted but ultimately decided not to go. I didn’t really want to be a lawyer; I just wanted to have the opportunity to keep on going to school.

 This pretty much sums up my educational philosophy both then and now.

My son, Billy, was in this kindergarten class.

Five years later in 1986, I received my fourth certificate in the midst of working on my Specialist’s Degree and just before my third child’s second birthday. Molly had been a bit of a surprise when she'd arrived, but, although I was certainly happy to have her and loved her just as dearly as I loved the first two, her wonderfulness didn't stop me from my commitment to moving up within my profession.  She probably wouldn't have survived if Barbara, our neighbor, hadn't stepped in to be my much better suited stand-in.  Then, in 1987, I was offered my first out-of-classroom assignment, a job that had me traveling all over the state, training teachers in an early childhood program.  I was pretty full of myself by then and it was wearing on my marriage.

The professional woman juggling work, kids, Molly's blanket, and a cat.

By 1991 when  my fifth certificate arrived in the mail, I was in the midst of a divorce and a doctoral program.  I wasn't traveling as much with my job, but my degree quest had me engaging in a 240 mile round trip to the University of Georgia at least one evening a week.  In 1993, I became an elementary principal, a position I kept for five years.

In 1997, one year after I received my sixth certificate, I finished my Doctorate in Educational Leadership and started my quest to see what my next job would be.  The Dean of Education at Georgia Southwestern State University called and asked if I wanted to join the faculty there.  I did,  and so I left a job paying $80,000 a year for one paying about $52,000.  Although my life as a college professor was much less grueling than my life as a principal, the pay sucked and at some point I realized I'd educated myself into a much lower paying job.

Year 2001 brought an attack on America and my seventh certificate.  I was still at the college and enjoying it, but I worried that my relatively low salary would affect my retirement benefits, so I checked around to see if I could find a job with better pay.  That came with the Department of Education and a move to Atlanta in 2005.  I loved Atlanta but wasn't crazy about the job and what I really wanted was to teach children again before I hung up my professional hat..

By 2006, I had a new job teaching second graders in a wonderful school in Buckhead, which brought renewed meaning to my seventh renewal and my eighth certificate.  I'd come full circle and was back doing what I'd set out to do back in 1971.

So, here I am to now, with my ninth certificate, which came to me the same week as my 61st birthday.  For the first time, it wasn't mailed.  Instead, I had to download it from the Professional Standards Commission website before I could print it.  One of my young teacher friends seemed perplexed as to why I needed to print it at all since it was safely stored on the PSC website.  She didn't know about the other eight, safely kept in a drawer in my living room, evidence of a well-lived (or at least well-intended) life.

I've been contemplating retirement of late, but I'm now thinking I  might stay on a while longer since I still enjoy my job (most days). 

After all, I'm certified for five more years.

How could you not love working with people this size all day?

Work

Last Friday, my ex, the only man to whom I’ve ever been married, retired after working for the same pharmaceutical company for thirty-six years. On Saturday, I was lucky enough to be able to hear Joan Baez singing through my sunroom window. And then on Monday, I went back to work as my summer vacation ended. All of the above has gotten me thinking about work and how I feel about it.

The Big Kat seems pretty happy with his several-days-old retirement, as he was tired, not of the crux of the work: the calling on doctors he’s called on for years to tell them about drugs he believes in, but, instead, the peripheral exercises: the meetings, the paperwork, the bottom line, the rah-rah. When I talked to him about it, he said he realized what he was going to miss was no longer there anyway – the old days, the old guys, the old stories.

What does listening to Joan Baez have to do with my world of work? Joan Baez is 69 years old. I know this because I looked it up. I’m always happy to see people older than I am who are still working at something they love – and to have done what she’s done for over fifty years makes me think she must still love it. I can’t imagine she’s worried about surviving on her retirement funds, but you never know. Her 401K may have gone south like so many others.

And then there’s my going back to work. Although, when school starts each fall, when I say “just one more year”, deep down inside, I’m scared to death to retire. I’ll change jobs in heartbeat, actually every five years or so, but staring into that abyss is a frightening thing for me personally. My problem is that I don’t know who I am without work.

When you're young, you think, boy, won't it be great when I can retire. I didn’t realize until I got older that retirement (real retirement, not early retirement because you made a fortune as a commodities broker and are now going to sail around the world in your catamaran) means to the world that you are no longer viable, no longer worthy of being paid.

It’s got to be terrible when you're forced into retirement as lots of people have been recently. I think the best case has to be what my ex just did. He planned it carefully, taking into account his health, his money, and his interests. We'll just have to wait and see how he does with the change of routine because he is one routine-oriented man. He'll probably be on the golf course at the same time each day, from sunrise until the free beer-n-nachos buffet at five and then home in time for the Hill Street Blues re-run du jour.

I do have to say I enjoy work more now that I know I could retire. I remember back in the days when the years were yawning ahead of me, wondering if I could survive it all, the monotony, the drudgery, the getting up early in the morning. Now, I almost feel like it’s a privilege to be on the payroll, with someone paying me to do something at my age and level of disrepair. And then there are the work friendships: the discussions about who did what to whom and who said what and don’t tell anybody. I love the work culture, with us against them and did you hear about her.

I have friends who are retired and enjoying it. For some of them, it's because they are relatively well off financially. For others, it's because they have a partner in crime and travel, in most cases a spouse. For still others, it's because they've found something interesting to do, a hobby, a passion, a cause.

But, since there's little chance I'm going to come into big money any time sooner or later, and even less of a chance there's a former boyfriend who wants to be a future husband checking me out on my Facebook page, I'm just going to have to find my future in what I like to do and what I'm at least somewhat good at.

And since it doesn't look like Joan Baez is going to hire me as a back-up singer or a roadie, I guess I'll just stick with this writing stuff along with some sewing, reading, TV watching, and talking about my grandkids on the side. All of that, any way you promote and cipher it, pays little to nothing, but it's cheaper than golf, and so far, it's keeping me out of the singles' bars.

By the way, do they still even have singles' bars? If they do, are there any that cater to the over-sixty set, with Happy Hour from three to five? I wonder if they need a bartender with no experience, one who's slightly hard of hearing and needs to be in bed by eight.