My parents always taught me it was important to do good in school because without an education you had nothing to offer society and society would only offer you the hardest and the most low paying jobs. My brother did not do well in school and he did not go on to college, he is five years older than I am so during my high school years I watched him struggle with life after graduating. Because of this my parents were very hard on me through my school years. C's were cause for punishment by grounding, B's were o.k., but they told me I could do better. When I struggled with Algabra they paid a tutor to work with me every day after school. I can't say who was a greater influence; my mom or my dad. Their contributed influence was of equal importance. My mom went to nurses training and became an R.N. within 2 years. For as long as I can remember she held a steady, high paying job. Every where we went people asked her questions about their health and the health of family members. At a very young age I knew people respected my mom because of her job. Our family to this day still calls her 'Nurse Nancy'. She always told me I needed an education to become independent. Although my dad attended UK buisness school, he partied to much and didn't get a degree. This was kind of funny since he was harder on me then my mom. But my dad experienced first hand what the lack of an education causes. He struggled to hold jobs and never really had a high paying job. But when he was 45 he proved to me just how important he thought an education was. He went back to school. He went to nurses training at Shawnee State University. He also went on to get his master's degree in theology from a bible school in Georgia. When I was 12 and wanted to join the Navy and become a fighter jet pilot (don't laugh), he took me to Florida and walked me around the campus of Embry Riddle Areonautical Engineering School. He always told me I could do anything I set my mind to, he still does. Because of my parents teachings and also because of the way they lived their lives (they showed me not just told me that an education was important), not going to college was not an option for me.

From the time I could talk until my sophomore year in high school I wanted to be a nurse just like my mom. When I got sick and had to miss school, I didn’t stay home. My mom took me to work with her and I got to see first hand what nurses do. I thought my mom was hero and still do, but the desire to be a nurse started fading my 10th grade year in high school when I got to know Bambi.
Bambi was the school bully and had few true friends; most of the kids that were here friends were scared not to be her friends. Bambi only bothered me once and I stood up to her, so after that we were friends.
The thing about Bambi was she was the only kid in elementary school, junior high and high school that had to see the speech teacher on a regular basis. When I was in school that’s what we were called, the speech teacher. Bambi’s speech impairments were so severe that she was unintelligible until our 7th grade year. Our 7th grade year was when I had my run-in with Bambi and I noticed I could understand her, but she still mis -pronounced a lot of words.
I started noticing in junior high that the teachers did not take Bambi seriously, and half of the time did not even honor her questions with an answer. Instead of trying to help Bambi they either ignored her or sent her on one errand after the other to keep her busy. By the time we got to high school they did not even make her go to class, she worked in the office or cafeteria. Bambi’s only true friend was the speech teacher, and sadly I can’t even remember her name. I never had much contact with her. I only remember having my hearing tested once and she was the on that performed the test.
I would see Bambi and the speech teacher walking down the halls, laughing and talking. She never did that with any of our other teachers.
My 10th grade year the speech teacher died from throat cancer and Bambi dropped out of high school. I can’t remember the last time that I saw her. I knew then that I didn’t want to be a nurse, but I wanted to work with kids like Bambi instead. I still did not know what a speech pathologist was, I was under the impression that the woman that worked with Bambi was just a special teacher and I did not want to be a teacher.
It all came together my senior year. I was doing an internship at the elementary school and the principal asked me what I wanted to be. I told him I wanted to work with kids with speech impairments, but I did not want to be a teacher or strictly in the medical field. He told me my only other option was a speech pathologist. I did a little checking and discovered what all I could do if I became a speech pathologist and my mind has been made up ever since.