When you are foolishly young and a senior in high school, you tend to believe that the road towards your bachelor’s degree is a straight path. As that wide-eyed eighteen-year-old I entered college with the dream of being only the second person in my extended family (all 54 of us) to not only go to college, but to graduate also. A way of life in those hills of Appalachia, my father quit school in the 6th grade and my mother finished 10th grade. Yet they instilled within me the love of education; the love of travel (I had traveled to forty-eight states by the time I was eleven.) and the love of God.
Within months of starting college, my road took an expected turn. I was pregnant and married and back to Eastern Kentucky to start my new life. I wasn’t happy but I made the best of the life I had. I longed for true love. I keep hoping that one day I would find it.
The road I took over the next thirty-six years was as crooked as those mountain roads that lead through the valleys, up in hollows and upward to a top of a mountain and down below. The road wasn’t easy. It challenged ever thing within my being and my soul.
Like many women, I gave it my all even when my heart wasn’t in it. Giving 110% is the only way I know…. However, I gave that 110% to financing my husband’s hunting trips and not to my next semester of college. I gave 110% to my two children, whom I loved more than life itself and years later proudly watched them both graduate with honors from college. I gave 110% to my job as a para-educator, speech and drama coach and coach of the technology team that I coached. I gave 110% to my students and told them countless times to never give up on their dreams. I gave 110% to my community by conducting Miss America preliminaries and helped awarded over $2,000,000 in in-kind scholarships and watch my contestants graduate with college degrees. As I watched so many fulfill their educational goals, mine was still unfulfilled. That degree and that dream of mine still lingered in my mind. In my heart. In my soul.
After my divorce and the death of my parents, I moved to the sunny shoreline of Fernandina Beach. I like to believe that the ocean restored my heart….my soul. I enjoyed my alone time however I still was searching for that one true love.
One day I woke up and finally said, “It is MY time.” In 2013, I enrolled at Florida State College at Jacksonville and thirty-six years after that first college class I proudly walked across the stage in May of 2016 to receive my Bachelor of Applied Science in Logistics. I know my parents were smiling down on me at that moment and so very proud of their Susie.
I now served as the media spokesperson for the college’s Logistics program and am featured in their billboards, print ads, and on-line ads. I must admit that it is amazing to be traveling down the road and seeing your face on a billboard. Serving on the School of Business’ Advisory Council is a way I give back to the college who helped me turn my dream into reality.
My degree, along with the eleven certifications that I hold, along with my determination, helped me to be named the first female to ever hold the position of Safety Manager at the company I work for. Within three short years of being employed here, I am now the Operation Manger here at RDL Logistics, moving freight on the highways of the southeast.
When I was a Para-Educator I know I made an impact in the lives of the children I taught. Unlike other Para-Educators, I had my own classroom as the school’s Computer Lab Instructor. I loved teaching…. everything about it. I miss it. And that is the reason the road I have been on is about to take another turn. I want nothing more than to receive my MBA so that I can become an adjunct professor and share my knowledge, my love of teaching and learning, my experiences and to be quite honest….my broken road. I like to believe that my true love is education and the “you” in the below lyrics is my master’s degree that is waiting on me.
I set out on a narrow
way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you
Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you
Between The Lines 