Where am I going to school??

It has been crazy around here as we prepare to move and I look at where to continue my education. UT being my first choice just isn't in the cards for me or as I would put it, not God's will at this time. My second choice? TCU. Has anyone ever looked at how much the tuition is there??? Oh my! So, I am touring UNT tomorrow to check it out. I was a little hesitant because it wasn't really in my top 5, but I do know alot of people that have graduated there including loved ones so it is definitely growing on me. I am still seriously thinking of taking the Fall semester off for a break and to get the kids settled into a new school/neighborhood. We will see. Maybe a mini-mester. Anyways, I wanted to share an essay I wrote for one of the schools. I thought it was cool and I don't think that of my own writing most of the time. Let me know what you think! And..I'll let you know if I will be Mean Green or a Horned Frog. A Horned Frog with a heckuva lot of debt to pay back. Whew.


From the seat of an old tractor, the fields went on for miles. I would watch my daddy feel the dirt in his hands as if he could feel it breathe. From the back windshield of our old Monte Carlo, the roads went on forever. I would crawl up against the warm glass and fall asleep counting the stripes in the road. From the top of an oak tree, the ground looked hard and unforgiving but I lay on the branch to watch the clouds form into unobtainable mountains. The world seemed so big, yet I knew I could somehow touch it. I could run through the mile-long fields and eventually find there was a dirt road that served as a boundary. I could press my face against the window and wait patiently until I saw the old white house that was my home. I could climb down the tree and know the mountainous clouds would eventually fade into night. As a child, all of these things made themselves known to me but none served more definite than the fact that Texas encompassed them all and I knew then that I never wanted to leave. I am still that wide-eyed curious child. I seek adventure. I have a glass that’s half full. I see my goals within reach and they begin to take the form of a wide open Texas sky.

As a farmer’s daughter, I never had much in the way of material possessions. One thing that my daddy did give us was an educational drive. He pushed us beyond our limits with our school work. He encouraged us to drive forward and be something he never had the opportunity to be. A man that seemed genius to me gave it all up to work a farm for his parents, all the while watching his sisters go on to higher education. It has been years since he has passed on and I still find him somewhere deep within me encouraging me to do more. To be more. Sometimes, when I speak, it is not me talking to my own children, but the voice of my father telling them to push forward and drive. It’s time that I remind myself to do just that. It’s time to listen to that voice within me. It has been a quiet whisper as I set myself aside for my family. That whisper has become a roar these last few years. A roar to be heard throughout Texas. I will do more. I will be more. For my dad. For my kids. For me. I have the drive within me. The drive to go beyond the mundane into extraordinary measure.

I had put off the inevitable for years to take care of three very individual personalities and while doing so, lost sight of my drive. My drive found me at a conference for a non-profit organization reaching out to youth. While speaking to the founder, an epiphany came about. Here I was, so involved in everything I wanted to do, all the while not doing anything I needed in order to take it to the next level. So my journey began. Never in a million years would I have thought to take on a full course load with three children; but I did it. Not only did I do it, I did it with enthusiasm. I was in my element of both motherhood and student. It was as if I were made for both to coexist. With diapers in one hand and pencils in the other, I faced the challenge head on and have come out stronger because of it. As I look back at that same horizon on a field that is now a thousand homes, I can close my eyes and see my dad grinning at where I’ve been and where I’m going. I’m doing what I was made to do. Maybe not in the world’s view of the right timing, but in my own. Everyone thinks insanity has taken over me as I tote a book bag with my diaper bag. I just smile and watch my kids watching me. They watch me read. They watch me study. They see me learn. That, to me, is the greatest achievement of my life. Taking the drive that my father gave me and being able to see my children witness it and absorb it. I never want to stop the display. I never want to stop learning. I want to drive.