Corky Paige

I was homeschooled all the way through high school. We had books we had to read, tests we had to take, and papers we had to write just like in a public school. Some differences were that we were at home, we didn’t get an “F” if we didn’t turn something in until a week after it was due (though we did get some other sort of punishment), and we didn’t have a different teacher for every subject. It was an interesting time. I sometimes wish I had gone to a public school, and I wonder how I would have turned out and who I would have been. Would I have been as introverted and as afraid of everything as I am? Probably not! Would I have been better equipped to deal with people? Probably. Would I have had more friends? Maybe. Would I have been able to learn as well and teach myself and find information like I can now? Probably not. Would I have lost important parts of who I am today? Probably. Would it have been worth it? Who knows! But it can’t be changed now, so…

I graduated from high school in Summer of 2006, but didn’t start college at Virginia Western until Fall of 2007, and I didn’t get a job until Summer 2007. I have often thought that if I had listened to my dad and hadn’t waited a year to go back to school, I would have been done a year sooner, and I wouldn’t be a year behind a lot of people my age. But whether it was a good or bad decision really depends on what I did with that time. I had a short-term job working a couple hours every Tuesday in a church nursery, and I worked on driving and studying driver’s ed. Those two things alone don’t really warrant taking a year off of school.

But I did something else with that year: I was the mother to someone else’s child. Granted, I didn’t have to keep him at night or pay for any of his stuff, but I took care of him. Almost every day, pretty much all day I would keep him; I fed him, changed him, put him down for naps, took care of him when he was sad or hurt, played with him, and loved him. He came to me over anyone else (including his real mother). He even called me mom once. I poured much more time, energy, and love into him than his mother, and he was like a son to me. I could have gone straight to college out of high school, but I would have had to miss out on that year with my baby. Once, a year or so after starting school and after not having seen my baby for quite some time, I was at my parents’ house and he was there. His parents had come to pick him up. But a minute after they left, he came running back through the door and he said “I forgot to give Courtney a hug!” He hugged me and ran back out. He didn’t say anything else or pay any attention to anyone else, and my heart just melted. I wouldn’t trade that year being a mother for anything.

But I did go back to school at the end of that summer, and I started working towards an AAS degree in Information Systems Technology. It took me six whole semesters to that degree, but I’m now finished. Since getting my associate’s degree, people ask me “what’s next?” wondering if I’m going to go back to school to get a bachelor’s degree, or if I’m going to start a career. Well, he truth of the matter is that I’m not doing either of those things. This makes people wonder why I went to school in the first place. I went to school for many reasons, but I didn’t go to get a job and have a career. I went to school to learn things, to grow as a person, to experience things I had never experienced before, and to observe different teaching styles in the hope of learning a thing or two about what makes a good teacher and what makes a bad one. For as long as I can remember, all I have wanted to do with my life was to be a wife and mother. I wanted to have children, to be a stay-at-home mom, and to homeschool any children I might have. My dreams and expectations have grown, but that is still my desire for my life. About now you might be wondering why I chose the degree I did when there may have been much better options, if being a homeschool mom was my dream. To answer that, I will say that I have been interested in computers for quite some time, and I thought it would be interesting–which it was.

Many people have also asked me what I plan on doing with my degree, and I keep answering “nothing” when in fact that isn’t quite true. What I plan on doing with my degree is this: Understanding and communicating with my husband about his passion. He can get excited and talk to me about some complicated database query he’s been working on, and I can understand (mostly) and rejoice with him, instead of giving him a blank stare and then being like “whatever” and going along with my day. If you have enough money to live, then I would say that’s a much more fulfilling use of a degree than just having a high-paying job.

So, what’s next for me? Well, I’m not 100% sure. I’m planning to go back to school in the fall and work towards something that has nothing to do with computers. I want to keep learning and going to school until I have children. I don’t want to have children while I’m working towards a degree, but I would rather have children than another degree. Now that I have my associate’s degree, there is nothing else that I really want to finish before I have children. Though, Jeff and I have discussed children and we’re waiting another 1.5 to 2 years, unless we decide otherwise or God decides to give us children sooner (or later).