My Life of Learning

My name is Barbara Grant and not only am I a GSC Alumni, but I also work for the college in Concord!  I have a wonderful job, registering and welcoming students (new and current) to GSC's evening college classes.  One of the attributes I bring to my job is my knowledge of the "other side of the fence."

Having had first hand experience as a GSC student, I am well versed in the trials and tribulations of those continuing their education, working towards a degree.  By choice, it took me 13 years (I kid you not!) to get my bachelor's degree.  Being the mother of three children, working (I guess some of you know the story), I could only handle one college evening class a term.  Being able to take classes anywhere in the University System further increased my flexibility.

So here I am, all these years later, with a bachelor's (and a master's) degree and working for my Alma Mater.  It can't get any better than that.  An additional bonus for me is that I've been able to fulfill my lifelong dream of teaching!  I teach Digital Scrapbooking for OLLI, a GSC grant funded, adult education program for people 50 and over.

While an undergraduate at GSC, I interned for NPR's The Exchange through an independent learning contract, Marquee Magazine accepted a paper I wrote for a film history class taken at Manchester NH University, and two additional papers were accepted for presentation at DePauw University.  None of this would have been possible without the support and encouragement of the staff and faculty at GSC (formerly known as College for Lifelong Learning).  GSC gave me great latitude in pursuing my developing interests (no pun intended) in film, storytelling and the narrative.  These interests later connected in my graduate studies at the University of New Hampshire where I obtained my Master of Arts Liberal Studies.  My thesis project?  A website containing a database of films made between 1916 - 1940 which were based on some form of literature authored by women.
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The Kindness of Strangers

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 by Barbara Grant

Embarking on an adult college education is a little like leaving the comforts of ones familiar surroundings to travel.  The obstacles encountered on our way to our destination often arise from information we don't have.  Often, we find ourselves dependent upon the kindness of strangers to see us to our final destination.

Most of us have experienced the ups and downs of air travel – literally and figuratively. My particular travel woes on a recent flight out of Manchester NH were not the result of flight delays but rather from not knowing that airlines stopped accepting luggage thirty minutes before flight time - the dead line I missed by two minutes!

What followed was an agonizing three and a half hour wait on standby for the next, and last, flight of the day.  By the grace of wonderfully kind gate attendant, literally minutes before the doors closed, I took the only unclaimed seat.

If I thought my travel difficulties ended when I took that seat, I was mistaken. With only an hour and a half between the Manchester flight and my connection in Detroit, the pilot’s announcement (as the plane sat idling at the gate) that "we" were over the weight limit generated more than mild anxiety. The solution, he said, was to burn off fuel. So we sat, the engines revved and the minutes passed.

The pilot then backed the plane away from the gate and proceeded to take us on a tour around the perimeter of the airport.  Coming to a stop at a runway, the engines revved a final time before taking off. The entire process reduced the one and a half hour layover between my two flights to less then thirty minutes.  During the flight, my panic and anxiety rose, in spite of reassurances from the two men sitting on either side of me that I'd make my connecting flight.

The minute the plane landed, the man on my left pulled out his Blackberry and asked for my connecting flight’s number. In minutes, he told me what gate the flight was departing from. Now, he said, we need to know this plane's arrival gate number. If the number was a single digit, he explained, I’d have to take the tram to the next terminal and I'd more than likely miss my flight. The gentleman to my right craned his neck to see out the small window and minutes later announced "Gate A49!"  Once you enter the concourse, the Good Samaritan on my right directed, turn right. Your gate is straight ahead, at the very end of the terminal.  Doing the math in my head, twenty-eight gates (half on the left and half on the right), didn't seem that far. 

I thanked them both for their help and raced up the ramp, turned right as instructed and raced towards gate A77.  But the reality of the distance I had to cover was so different from the cold, hard math.  Only half way there, time was running out.  Spotting an airline attendant manning Gate A59, I stopped, gasped my name and asked her to notify gate A77 that I was almost there and continued on my way as she reached for her phone.

In a few minutes, Gate A77 was in sight and I felt a surge of relief  seeing the line of people.  But my relief was short lived because the line turned out to be for gate A75!  It was then that I saw gate A77’s door closing.

"Wait" I yelled. "Wait!"  But the door clicked shut. Turning, the attendant held up his hand, telling me to stop - or so I thought until I saw the smile on his face and realized he was telling me to take it easy. Removing the electronic key card from his pocket, he opened the door and motioned me in.

The fact that I arrived at my destination at all is a testament to the small kindnesses of strangers who crossed my path that day. If any one of them had not offered his assistance, my day would have had a different ending.

The staff and faculty at Granite State College are like those strangers who helped me reach my destination - ready to get involved, eager to be of assistance.  Granite State College staff and faculty do whatever they can to insure that Granite State College students arrive at their educational destination.  However, there is one difference between my Good Samaritans and Granite State College staff and faculty.  By the time Granite State College students graduate, they call many of our staff and faculty "friend."


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The Magic (Continued)

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Barbara Grant
"Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it.  Action has magic, grace and power in it."   German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goeth

I thought I could earn a college degree and the action of applying to Granite State College, intermingled with wonderfully helpful people I met at the college, brought the magic of so many learning experiences.  These experiences, in turn, graced me with the power to reach for even higher goals.

As an adult learner enrolling in adult school programs, especially at Granite State College (once known as College for Lifelong Learning), you have a bit of an edge over the traditional college student.  You come with  more "life experience" which is a huge advantage because college, after all, is more than just book learning - it is life learning and functions as a window into the way the world outside college works.  Adult learners of a certain age more than likely have years of workplace experience, not to mention parental experience.  They know how to multitask, and have been exposed to a wider variety of social situations.  Basically, the older adult learner comes with a bit of a foundation.  All that the adult learner needs is a healthy dose of self confidence.

On that foundation, the "magic of the possible" blossoms, opening up unlimited opportunities for life-enriching experiences.  At Granite State College where there is considerable latitude regarding independent learning contracts, taking courses from other University of New Hampshire System institutions as well as earning credits for one's life experiences, I found myself enjoying a wide variety of experiences.

Through an independent learning contract, I worked as an intern at NHPR's The Exchange hosted by Laura Knoy, immersing myself in the behind-the-scenes mechanics of how a radio program is crafted.  The capstone of this experience was assisting with the production of a segment on children's poet Shel Silverstein, author of  Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light In the Attic, who died shortly before my intership ended.  My meager contribution to the production of that segment earned me a brief mention at the end of the program.  No "A" could match the feeling of accomplishment I experienced listening to that segment of the show.

Through my years of study, the magic continued.  The professor of a UNH-M  film class I took encouraged me to submit one of my papers, The Simpsons:  A Fairy Tale,  to DePauw University's undergraduate Honors Conference for consideration.   The delight, the thrill of finding the fat acceptance envelope in the mailbox one February afternoon was like nothing like I had felt before.   

Attending the DePauw conference introduced me to another world - that of academics from the teacher's side of the educational equation.  Mentors were assigned to shepherd us through the weekend's activities.   Well known guest speakers - Tony Kushner, author of the play Angels in America and Dr. George Gerbner, professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, lectured.  Best of all was meeting like minded students who shared similar hopes and dreams for their futures.  As if I needed a sign that I was headed in the right direction, I came upon this street sign while wandering around DePauw's campus -



The magic, apparently, wasn't going to stop.

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A Kind of Magic

Saturday, January 16, 2010 by Barbara Grant

"It’s a kind of magic...
One dream one soul, one prize
One goal...
One golden glance of what should be...
One shaft of light that shows the way...
The bell that rings inside your mind, challenging the doors of time."           
Queen - It's A Kind of Magic

What was the "bell" that went off in your mind that caused you to reflect on where you were in your life and where you wanted to be?

For me, it was the birth of my third child.  I loved my role of wife and mother.  I had always wanted and looked forward to raising a family.  But one day, as I sat feeding the youngest baby, I thought "Is this all there is?  Isn't there something more?" 

In high school, the St. Joseph nuns offered me a golden glance of what could be, encouraging me to consider college, but they were ahead of their time.  The thinking back then (the pre Ms Magazine era) ran something like this: sending a girl to college was a waste of money because she was only going to get married and have babies.  And, in my family, there was also the issue of money or rather the lack of it.  I'm sure there must have been financial aid back then, or at least something similar to it, but I knew nothing about such things.  In any case, it wouldn't have mattered - my paycheck was needed at home.  

So, graduating from high school, I worked on Wall Street for two years, eventually marrying and moving to New Hampshire.  Three children and seven years passed before the "bell rang inside my mind" as the dream of a college education reawakened.  And so, the door to my future was challenged, opening just a crack.  Researching adult college courses in New Hampshire, I found the School for Lifelong Learning, as Granite State College was known back then (by the time I graduated, the name had morphed into the College for Lifelong Learning). 

I met with an adviser at the Manchester NH college office who shed a shaft of light that pointed the way to achieving my goal.  She mapped out a plan for my Associates Degree (because, at the time, working towards a bachelor's degree seemed such a huge, insurmountable challenge) and I got to work - one part time class at a time.  Over the years, the magic continued. 

Meeting kindred souls, people in my adult college courses who were dealing with the same day-to-day issues as I and aspired to goals similar to mine; befriending faculty who nurtured the flame of inquisitiveness burning inside of me and who helped me to discover the wonderful world of adult learning - all of this, and more, caused a seismic shift in my perception of what the future could hold for me.

The process of "challenging the doors of time" took thirteen years but I finally earned the prize - my Bachelor's Degree.  The act of achieving my goal was so intoxicating, the magic so necessary to my being, that I decided to move on to the next "door" -  a master's degree.   All these years later, the magic continues to happen, doors keep opening.
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Sitting at the Crossroads

Saturday, January 16, 2010 by Barbara Grant
Part of what knits humanity together is the common ground of our shared experiences.  It is on this common ground that we build our relationships.  My job at Granite State College in New Hampshire places me at a crossroads where I meet people who are going through many of the same learning and life experiences I had as a student and  I have the opportunity to share a bit of what I learned, hopefully making it easier for the students. 

Recently, a new student came to the Concord NH office for a meeting with her adviser and to register for her first classes.  She didn't come alone.  This student was accompanied by her father - and her one-year-old twins!  Her dad would care for the children while she attended to the business beginning her journey towards a degree.

As we talked, I learned her twins were preemies, born months too early.  She was surprised to learn that I, too, had a preemie - 35 years ago! - and that my preemie would soon be making me a grandmother for the first time!  Our conversation went off the adult college education track, veering over to the "mommy track," as we compared our experiences.  How early did our babies arrive?  How much did they weigh at birth?  How long were they in the hospital? 

She asked me if I had had a hard time finding clothes for my preemie, did it take long for my daughter to catch up developmentally to the children in her age group.  I told her how in the beginning the hospital took surgical masks and cut them in two to use for diapers.  On the wall in my office, she could see visible proof, my daughter's recent photo, that babies born as tiny as hers grow up to be perfectly normal adults with perfectly normal lives. 

And I, the experienced, older of the two, learned something from her that I hadn't known before.  While identical twins come from the same egg, they each have their own amniotic sac.  Well, almost all of them do.  This student's twins actually shared an amniotic sac which put them in the category of the rarest of identical twin births! 

College is so much more than book learning.  It is "life learning."  In telling our stories we not only share a piece of ourselves, we pass on the benefit of our experiences and in the process make our lives and the lives of those we interact with richer by far.
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