Halcyon Daze - Growing up Canadian
Page 18
I sat there in the car, one deadly-quiet night, and said to myself: “What are you doing?" That night, I promised myself that I would return to school in the fall, and that I would finish what I had started, and I'd give myself the opportunity for something better.
That fall I returned to my studies, and I completed my first undergraduate degree. It felt good. I had accomplished something that I had set out to do. I had originally wanted to wander from studies because I felt I would be coming out of school too young, and too green. It took an enormous amount of will power to complete the original plan, but I did.
I found no great opportunities upon graduation, so I drove a cab for yet another year. Then I decided to return once again to school to pursue a second degree. Best marks yet. That was a tough year. There were forty hours a week of actual class time. I was working Saturday and Sunday nights. That left Friday nights to go out and have a good time.
I earned my second undergraduate degree in 1980, some eight years after starting off university. Amazingly enough, I learned self-discipline and determination in the working world, and then I applied those things to the world of academia. Two different schools, same lessons.
That year marked the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.
Halcyon Daze
Growing up Canadian
by
N. A. Dalbec
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ISBN: 978-0-9730714-4-3, issued by Library and Archives Canada