I did not complain, and have not complained, for setting my own interests aside for others. I have valued partnership’s love and commitment with devotion to family, and my children getting what they have needed.
But, these pursuits did not extend easy space for my own progressing to the degree I would have benefitted from. I have fought for this sacred space and felt persecuted for it. Lack of support and others’ derision has accumulated too much toxic self doubt regarding if having my dreams is valid.
I spoke by text today with a friendly woman in Algeria. She was well spoken in French, Arabic, and Berber. I want to relearn Spanish, and learn Italian, French, and Arabic. I suppose I will also need to learn German, but from past family experiences, I have some negative association.
I have found in my brief traveling through France, Germany, and Egypt that people located near the Mediterranean know several languages. This is a higher level of communication taught to them, valued and expected because they are near so many different cultures.
It has chafed my pride that Europeans see Americans as ignorant. I cannot speak well of many of our foreign nor internal policies – but, usually, whomever is in charge of running our country does not represent me. Policies are passed to keep our citizens dumb and compliant so that we may be used as corporate market feed or military numbers to promote political agendas. Higher education, for quite some time, was portioned only for the wealthy and elite.
In my time line, I have accomplished great things that others would not have expected, nor accepted as possible, and have had applicable, intuitive vision. As example, I forsaw Marine Biology and Sustainability being needed in Central Coast education, but was dissuaded from pursuing this direction by professors because my vision lacked proof’s verification. I was ten years ahead of Cal Poly’s now adjusting to mainstream.
As I arrive to current civilization’s location, it turns out to have evolved parallel to me. What I struggled to access before is now offered more freely – yet, still barred to me, financially. Having expended all grants and loans to fashion a path where none before existed, I cannot even access funds to finish my degree of only 12 more units at an accredited college online that allows me to design my own degree, incorporating most of my prior learning.
Now that I’ve been cast again into poverty, I might qualify for aid from a community program to finish locally, but this will likely set me back in years and cost to achieve, as the trend upon transferring a degree in-progress to a new university or state college adds requirement of around 25 of their own units to confer their degree.
One unit x $500. The math is not in my favor for completing, The agency might get me going, but I could be stuck without ability to complete again, even father along the journey.
i have only ONE semester full-time left to finish my degree, but not the free time or money as yet to create this reality. I cannot compete for most jobs without a Bachelor’s, and it is required to teach English professionally along standard lines of inquiry (thus, my loophole will be tutoring independently). It’s an equation I’m still working, which hinges upon having any real sense of “security” to complete.
Returning to the subject of language, here in America, we were “forced” to learn one only to graduate. Despite my efforts to try and connect dots, there would be no basis at the time for continuing this education unless one planned to travel abroad.
This was late 1980s to early 1990s, of course, before the internet connected us all more easily to people across the world, and before inter-cultural exchanging of students (for example) became more prevalent.
I had chosen to learn Spanish in hopes I could speak with my best friend’s family and partake in her culture, but their language was classic and street Mexican – what I was being taught was classic Spanish from Spain, which had little local applications!
I have envied people’s opportunities in other countries for multi-language discourse, and have felt ignorant – though not by choice – as they’ve seemed so well spoken, while American heritage seemed bent on holding those of us with higher intellect and ideals down to rote course.
If there was no local work for one’s educational interest, you were strongly dissuaded from it and met barriers. Wanting to travel abroad and learn multiple languages was seen as a pure waste of time, reserved for the upper class echelon.
How many times have I been held down and/or pushed aside because I did not have a special pre-stamp of approval? How many times did I keep going forward on my own path despite continuous counter-resistance? And now, my “age” plays into it, as life experience is still not valued here in “the States” as it should be.
It is no wonder that I arrive here confused and heartbroken. My life has been a rough journey, with only passing friends waving. No one could really join up with me, for where I have been going has never matched up with others for very long. I have been unable to identify with many.
I have always been riding that edge of succeeding or failing, precariously balanced on an unpredictable precipice with disruptive winds too ready to blow.
As I assess options, no longer sure what to believe in, I do not see clearly in which direction to go. I am a creative artist and visionary, a lover of romanticism, an in-process linguist, and many more definitions already seen and yet to be shown.
I’m what they call a definite “life learner.”
Candid Corvid Productions 