Thoughts Prompted by Alaska Trip

The last few weeks I've taken an introspective meander down Memory Lane.  It's full of potholes.  Some large enough to swallow a lime green, peace-and-love-symbols-covered VW bus.

Back in the time before dirt, when I graduated from what was then called Palm Beach Junior College [who came up with junior college???] and was applying to universities, I was accepted at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  I lived in south Florida (Palm Beach county!) at the time, but grew up in a Chicago suburb.  I had a realistic sense of "winter." 

My reaction to Alaska now that I've finally visited?  If I had gone there for school, I wouldn't have left the state willingly!

So why didn't I go?

I couldn't afford the school on my own - out of state tuition is a killer.  My father was an olde tyme chauvinist who didn't believe in girls going to college.  He couldn't visualize me as anything but a secretary; considered bookkeeping beyond my abilities.  His attitude had cost me a full scholarship to a small, liberal-arts college when I was a senior in high school. 

I paid my way through PBJC.  Folks contributed indirectly by letting me live at home rent free.  (Not chore free:  family laundry, grocery shopping, meal prep ... after all, my paying job was only about 20 hours a week.)

Well, not surprisingly, they refused to help me pay for university.  Dreams of Fairbanks and the northern lights were displaced by the reality of attending a state school I could afford.

I went to Florida State.  Five years, two degrees (BS, MS).
(Edit 10/4:  look what I found - our department logo of awesome!)

There are seasonal weather changes in Tallahassee, which is in the northern part of Florida.  (The seasons in south Florida are lots of tourists and not so many tourists.)  It even snows in Tallahassee, on the order of "There's a snowflake!  Look, over there is another one!"  In the spring, though, the city is magnificent.  Dogwoods, azaleas, daffodils, tulips, more, all bloom in a riot of color.  For about a week.  Then the summer temperatures hit and overnight all the flower petals are browning on the ground.  (There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere; I'm not digging it out.)

We can never go back and see how our lives would have played out had we made different decisions.  In the case of university, I knew at the time it was a major pivot point in my life.

I know how the Tallahassee choice turned out.  Not bad, as it happens.