While I was the university, I met the guy I would later marry. I shouldn’t have, but I did. We weren’t seeing as much of each other when I graduated since he lived in a different city. There were lots of signs that things weren’t right, but I didn’t really see them at the time. I guess I saw the problems, but didn’t see them as really big problems. So my first job out of college was in corporate communications with a really bitchy boss. I was fired from that job. Why? Well the boss hated me, but the reason sent to HR was that I couldn’t perform the job. And why? Well I had developed carpal tunnel in one wrist which made typing all day long and cutting photos for print painful and difficult. I was fired after the second occasion when the photos weren’t cut perfectly straight. I didn’t have the strength to hold those thin photo pages (not photo stock paper) and cut them with an exacto knife. Publishing was so different then. Now straight photo edges wouldn’t be problem. You import the photo into a box with perfectly straight lines every time. Anyway, the job sucked. Pretty miserable experience. After being out of work for a few months, I found myself pregnant. Yep, happens even to smart people who should know better. I didn’t want to tell my mother, and I didn’t until I couldn’t keep it from her. I remember writing a long letter to her before Thanksgiving. I would be going home then, and I was showing. I found another job that fall before Thanksgiving. Pregnancy was not much fun. I was sick a lot. I got up several hours before I needed to be ready for work. It sometimes took two to three hours to get ready. Sometimes I had to start over after getting sick. I went though a lot deciding to keep the baby and what I was going to do after it was born.

A few months before I was due, the father came back into my life and decided that he’d like to get married. I didn’t want to move back home with my mother at the time. I wasn’t sure how I would take care of a baby entirely alone, so I agreed. Biggest mistake of my life. Short version: We got divorced a year later. Well, it takes a year to get divorced, so officially two years later. So a couple of years and $20K later, I was divorced, living with my mother and going back to school to get a degree in chemistry. Oh, the cost of the divorce? Well, I couldn’t deal with all the crap I was constantly bombarded with by my son’s father. Letters every week. Legal bullshit. I had the attorney handle it. Although he probably overcharged. I didn’t get what I wanted anyway. Four long days in court listening to how awful I was. The attorney was overly confident and didn’t really do his work.

So back to school I went. I traveled 100 miles round-trip every day for two years to take undergraduate courses in chemistry.

This picture shows a few buildings. It’s a small campus. I had my classes in the white building on the right. My goal at the time was to get into graduate school and be a professor. I spent the entire drive seeing myself graduate with a doctorate. It’s the only thing that got me through, and most likely made the doctorate a reality. The courses were sometimes a bit difficult, but not too bad. Organic chemistry was not my strongest course. I got to do several semesters of undergraduate research in various projects. I went through graduation with my new degree in chemistry, packed up my things and my son’s things and went 400 miles east to graduate school. I specifically picked the school based on researching professors and my visit there. I began graduate school with my research group already picked out. In fact, I went there in the summer on a special program where I got paid for the months prior to fall classes and worked in that professor’s group. I worked with lasers like in “Real Genius.” I was excited. I had wanted to work with lasers back when I was in mechanical engineering and saw a group doing research there.