Hey, This One Thinks She's Wonder Woman!

It started back in December of 1998 when I stood in line at the cashier's window to pay the tuition for that first class. I looked around, wondering how I could compete with all those...children. I had shoes older than some of them. But when I looked again, I saw other students who were over forty, like me. I wondered how many of them, like me, had been driven by a vague, nagging dissatisfaction with their lives to consider returning to school. I wondered how many of them, like me, had to do battle with themselves just to find the courage to apply to college after so many years. I wondered how many of them would become allies, or even friends.

My first class, "Study Skills for College Success," gave me valuable tools that continue to serve me well, but the most important thing I learned in the course was that I already knew what a lot of these kids had yet to learn. I already knew that life is not always fair, and that the rules that they might be forced to live by may not be their own. I already knew that the only person I had control over, ultimately, was myself.

I watched my new nineteen and twenty-year-old friends "rage against the machine" as they struggled with these realities. Sometimes they'd turn to me for explanations, and all I could say was, "That's the way it is. But in the future, maybe you'll be in a position to change it." In that class, and in all the classes since, I learned that my experience in the world was already valuable.

It continued with that first scholarship. The "Second Start Scholarship," offered by Arapahoe Community College, was designed expressly for students like me who were returning to college after an absence of more than five years. When the college awarded me that scholarship, they said to me, "Yes, you can do it! Yes, we believe in you! Yes, we want to be party to your success!"

I've done my best to deserve their investment of faith. I was inducted to Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year colleges; I've earned the privilege of being listed in the thirty-fourth annual edition of Who's Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges; and the American Society of Women Accountants recognized me as an "Outstanding Woman Accounting Student" for 1999-2000.

Each semester brought new challenges, new insights, and unexpectedly, new rewards. With every completed class and every hard-won "A," my belief in my self, my knowledge, and my abilities increased.

It was the simple yet profound act of returning to college that did it, and it began when I first walked through the doors of the school. Everyone I met at Arapahoe Community College became my ally. Every one of them had a hand in my transformation from a shy and frightened woman to a woman who believes she can do almost anything. And as I seek out new allies, within the college community and without, they consistently support the belief that the job I want to do is indeed a job worth doing.

My heart is in the arts, especially in music. My skills are in working with numbers and computers. My goal is to become a financial manager for nonprofit arts organizations such as Young Voices of Colorado and the Littleton Chorale. Organizations like these need people who understand that there's no fortune to be made working in the nonprofit industry and still want to be there.

These organizations need people who not only share their dreams, but also have the education, skills, and training to budget their impossible dreams into reality. These organizations need someone like me, someone who absolutely believes she can do almost anything - someone who thinks she's Wonder Woman.