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  3. I am a 27-year-old single mother. I am also travelling the road to my Ph. D. in psychology. I do not believe I am so different f

I am a 27-year-old single mother. I am also travelling the road to my Ph. D. in psychology. I do not believe I am so different f

admin2012-09-19  48
问题     I am a 27-year-old single mother. I am also travelling the road to my Ph. D. in psychology. I do not believe I am so different from the rest of the student population. I do know, however, that we parent-students have a few characteristics that set us apart on campus.
    For instance, we parent-students carry book bags with the requisite textbooks, spirals and pens. Ours, though, have added dimensions. At this moments, mine also contains a He-Man sword, a picture of a "big thing that grinds wood ’ drawn by my son Michael, a copy of "Are You My Mother?" and a Girl Scout cookie-order form. Parent-students have developed strong back muscles to lug this gear around.
     We parent-students are extra-friendly creatures. Some combination of an air of maturity and our relaxed outlook makes us natural confidants. We don’t have time to listen to confession but we do any way, for we realize we are a sort of haven midway between loudmouthed roommates and parents.
A student’s interests may be narrow; ours must expand to include consumer information, local school-bond issues and the names of all the Smurfs. Our knowledge spans generations—our own, our classmates’, our children’s. Multigenerational wisdom makes beginning Spanish easy when we use the espanol we’ve learned from Bert, Ernie and Big Bird.
    If other students need to know what time it is, they ask us. We always wear a watch. We may lack a spark of spontaneity, but we still enjoy going out for movies, concerts and hot-chocolate breaks. We just need some warning to juggle our schedule. After our efforts, we do not appreciate no-shows.
    We are tired beings. We put our kids to bed by 9:30(if we’re lucky)and then we open the books. This schedule usually catches up to me after lunch the next day. I have several pages of notes from afternoon classes that are downward-sloping lines, my last efforts before I succumbed to slumber. We may appear exhausted, too, because of our daily sprints across campus when we have five minutes to meet a daughter’s school bus. One full-load semester I thought I was going blind. No, said the ophthalmologist, those dark shadowy objects are not detached retinas, they are your eyelids. You need more rest.
    We may raise our hands more in class discussion. Stating an opinion aloud is no longer an intimidating event when compared with having a Caesarean section. We may also have more applied examples for what the professor is saying. Or maybe we’re just loudmouths because we’ve learned to speak above the roar of children’s voices.
    Sometimes we bring a child with us to class, when there are no babysitters available on the planet. Some may marvel at how well-behaved the child is. They do not see the trepidation behind such visits, the bribes, the threats and the bushel of M&M’s purchased as silencers. We don’t want our child interfering with the education of others. If there is a club meeting after school hours, the probability increases that Junior will be there with us. This has usually gone smoothly, except for the time I was being initiated into an honor society, and my daughter announced nature’s call to the solemn group.
    It may seem that we stick together, we parent-students, there being a magnet that attracts crazies to one another. The other day one such 23-year-old with a two-year-old daughter motioned for me to come over to her study area. She produced a cassette player. "I really should be studying Spanish, but listen to this, "she said. A second passed and then a tiny voice sang, "A-B-C-D-E-F-G. ""It’s Rachel saying her ABCs, ’ she explained. "God, isn’t it wonderful?" Another time two men and two women stood in the mainstream of between-class traffic at the humanities building discussing the joys of natural childbirth.
    We are seldom lonely. We do not go home to an empty—or chokingly crowded-- dorm but to a house full of welcoming Munchkins eager to be the first to hug us and to tattle on the other sibling. The children permeate our school projects, if we need to measure the moon’s orbit, the kids are outside in the chilly night air calculating with us, coming up with impressive figures only a few billion degrees off. They agree to be our subjects for behavior-modification projects in Child Development classes, with mixed results: my daughter stopped sucking her thumb for good; Michael stopped sleeping in Mommy’s room only for the 30 days necessary to collect his positive reinforcement. A parent’s research trips become magical outings for the kids, who learn in the library that one dollar’s worth of nickels can produce 20 Xeroxed copies of their hands.
    We have a lot of confidence. How could we miss when we have our own cheering section? My children have fully convinced me. I am the smartest student on campus. I picked up a term paper once after school with my son in tow, and he boomed out down the hall, "Gee, Mom, you get as in everything."
    Most professors compliment us on our diligence in doing homework.
    We are usually good students. Many of us were in school once before and played when we should have worked. This is our second chance, probably our last chance.
    We are 20;we are 50. We are single parents; we are married; we are grandparents. We have all sacrificed for the privilege of sitting at a cramped desk, and we don’t take our education lightly. Our greatest common bond? We parent-students all love school.
______ are good listeners, midway between roommates and parents.
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答案Old paraent-students
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