10 years ago today, I graduated from college. I was 22 and full of optimism. I had a teaching job waiting for me in Columbus, Ohio. I walked across the lawn in Graduation Hollow ready to begin my adult life. Bill Clinton was president. Gas prices were low, but I had no car so that didn’t impact my daily life.
After I left Wittenberg, I only imagined that at one point, I would start grad school since The (you have to say The) Ohio State University offered free classes to Columbus Public School teachers one class at a time. I took a few courses, but could not decide what I wanted to get a masters in. Some said I should be an administrator, i.e. principal.
Y’all saw how much trouble they gave Joe Clark, right. Yeah, I’m not the one.
I contemplated being a guidance counselor, but I saw that part of that job included following up on truant students.
I feel I did great work in the classroom, but times are a changing. We’re living in the day of technology where kids carry cell phones before they have a pencil, pen, and books in hand. Yesterday I read about how 2 middle school students tried to rape a staff member. The climate in the schools have changed tremendously. But despite what we see on TV and read in the news, there are still many great schools with wonderful students and teachers working together.
Ten years went by so quickly. As I sat in college, I saw my life going one way, as so many of us did, and the reality is different. I never had write a book on my list of things I want to be and do in life. I planned to be a child psychologist until I encountered Psych Stats. The devil dwells in math textbooks, lol.
In college, I was introduced to e-mail, but never imagined how the Internet would grow in leaps and bounds. Gas prices have done the same. 
My five years at Witt were great. Made a lot of great friends and had some wonderful professors who really improved my writing and critical thinking. The time spent at Wittenberg, most of it in the A/V section of the college library, were some of the best years of my life. Spending time in the Commons, with a cheeseburger combo, Mountain Dew, and 3 Otis Spunkmeyer cookies as I wasted time before going to the library or class.
I’ve grown up a lot in ten years. I think I have always been mature, but I see a lot of what I was told as a kid and a teen being so true for myself.
College gave me a very valuable education, but life after college has given me an even greater one. And without having to take out a student loan or two in the process.
What better way to find out about a book than to have the author themselves talk to you face-to-face about their book and how they came to write it? Alas, we aren’t yet quite technologically advanced enough to send