End of Summer: Chautauqua Boys' and Girls' Club
I'm not ready for it to be over yet, but it is. My daughter and I spent more than an hour with her college counselor this afternoon and then picked up her (21- yikes!) books, so senior year is definitely upon us. And I spent some time at my school, where teacher meetings start tomorrow, dumping a pile of books onto a tiny carrel in the middle school that I am staking out as My Personal Place since the promised teacher workroom has never materialized.
All of this organizing has got me thinking of all the places I ever started school in September. I decided that it would be more entertaining (for me, not for anyone else) to write those down rather than to continue to moan about my impossible working conditions. So....
I started kindergarten at the local in-town elementary school. We lived two miles away and my own rural school district didn't offer kindergarten. My mom must have driven me, but the next year...
I was off to first grade in my own school, this time seven miles away by bus. The county line runs pretty much down the middle of our road; hence, we went to school further out in the country and the kids down but across the road went to school in town.
In seventh grade I started boarding at a Catholic girls school run by Ursuline nuns. It was only 20 minutes away, but I seldom came home -- think Wicked-Stepmother-In-Residence.
In tenth grade I began another boarding school career in western Massachusetts. There really is no place like western Mass. in the autumn, and I should know, because...
I began college in South Hadley, Mass. ...
and my junior year in Williamstown, Mass. ...
before moving on to Providence, Rhode Island -- also a fine place to go to school.
A few years later and I found myself in law school in Ohio, and that was it for the moves. I've gone to graduate school and taught at schools and colleges in northeast Ohio, but I haven't budged from this house in 20 years.
After my adventures of this summer, I'm thinking that autumns in both northern Michigan and the Pacific Northwest have a lot of potential.
9 comments:
Yes, autumn IS beautiful here in Oregon. It's a very LONG season that lasts til almost Christmas. But, for me, there is nothing quite like fall in Wisconsin. We used to go to Door County every October to see the colors. That will always be the perfect fall vacation place to me. Lisa :-]
21 books!!!! Why so many?
I think a lot of them are the AP English novels.
21 books????? That sounds like an awful lot!
OK: a bio text, a math text, a couple of French paperbacks, a few history paperbacks; I guess that leaves about 12-14 books for English.
Lisa, I spent my honeymoon in Door County in October 15 years ago, coming up. It is beautiful there in the fall, but I preferred the summers! Pamela
What a lot of schools you went to. (Pretty photo, by the way.)
OK - so does that add up to three colleges as an undergraduate? All in incredibly beautiful places though. Well Providence isn't as lovely as the other too but it's closer to the ocean.
"other two" Yikes!!
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