Just a bit...

... of my (rather checkered!) educational autobiography. I'm Anne Dalke, one of the profs for this ESem. I was raised in the rural south, where I attended (pretty poor) K-12 public schools; spent a year in the 13th grade of a girls' school, as an exchange student in northernmost Germany; returned to the States to attend the College of William and Mary -- feeling aggrieved because the better state school, UVa, wasn't taking women in those days (!!); however, the tuition cost was only $500/semester! I majored in English (I'd always liked to read, and I was dating a man who kept writing poems that I didn't know how to respond to...). I dropped out @ the end of my junior year to marry the poet (and because I was bored with classes, and reading what-and-how I was told); first we ran a movie theater in central Pa; then I picked apples, cleaned houses, and made pottery for the tourists in southern Maine (got bored); went back and finished @ W&M; spent a summer working as a telephone operator. Found myself next in Philly, where my husband was starting law school @ Penn. Worked as a sec'y for the financial aid office @ the University (got bored), started taking grad courses for free, found I liked it a lot, and was good @ it, so I enrolled in the English Ph.D. program, but as the Master's exam approached, I got anxious and depressed, and dropped out before the second semester ended. I worked for a year as a sec'y for the English Dep't, got my bearings, and returned to get my Ph.D. That piece of my education was paid for w/ teaching fellowships. I started having my kids while I was still enrolled @ Penn. My first job was @ BMC, teaching freshman English part-time, in 1982; nearly 30 years later (working full-time plus now), I'm still @ it -- and here we are!