I was trying to come up with some inspiration to write about today, but nothing was coming to me.  Then I thought why not write about what was the reason to go back to college.  So, here goes.  I started back to college in April 2001.  There were many reasons to go back, but my main reason was to try and understand what was going on with my son and the male members of my family. 

I know that most people don’t really know anything about me, and there certainly is a lot to tell, but it would take years for me to write my life story.  I need to give you a little background.  I am the 4^th of 5 children.  All four of my siblings are boys.  We were raised by our mother in a really small town in South Central Washington.  My father has been a resident of mental institutions at least two times in his life.  His father was also in mental institutions at least two times.  My uncle, my father’s only sibling, to my knowledge has never been in a mental institution, but he has not had a stable life.  My grandfather’s parents both killed themselves and out of their 14 children several have been diagnosed with mental disorders.

In the spring of 2001, my son was suffering from a sever depression.  He was 13 at the time.  He had been seeing a child psychologist for just about 1 year.  My Father had killed himself the previous summer.  My oldest brother was seeing a psychologist.  Two of my other brothers were diagnosed with Manic Depression. (Same diagnosis as my Father and Grandfather)  I needed to figure out how to best help my son. 

I figured the best thing was to sign up for some general Psychology classes.  While I was at it, I really wanted to improve my writing skills. (They were atrocious)  So, I did just that.  Those Psychology classes did help. Plus the child psychologist helped.  But then it ended up being the child Psychiatrist who we worked with to find the right medication for my son.  This was a struggle that has lasted until this spring when my son was weaned off his medications and is a doing great.

The general Psychology class that I had signed up for in the Spring of 2001 was the first in a series of 3 classes, so I decided that I wanted to take the other two and because I didn’t want to take just 1 class, I signed up for a sociology class my second term and then a second college writing class the third term.  By then I was enjoying going to school.  It gave me something to do outside of the problems that my son and brothers were having.  It was a great outlet.  Now, I am getting ready to enter my final year  of study to obtain my Bachelor’s degree.  6 years will have passed, but they are not 6 years that I would do differently if I could do them over.