My Mom Degree

 

I always knew I wanted to be a mom, it was a always a goal of mine, but then people started asking me what I want to be when I grow up and for some reason that seemed totally separate from being a mom. Like every kid my dream career changed almost every year, but I never once thought about how that affected my goal to be a mom or how those two ideas would cooperate together. Once I started college I really had to face the fact that if I wanted to be the kind of mom I had envisioned for myself (stay at home mom and homemaker) I would have to work my career around that. I changed my major 6 times trying to find something the right one. Nothing really felt right, so in then end I was left with a hodge podge degree that didn't really specialize in anything. This made finding a job after graduating really difficult because I didn't have enough knowledge or experience in any one thing. 

At that point I felt really lost and discouraged. I still really wanted to be a mom, but we'd been trying to get pregnant for almost a year with no luck. I felt purposeless and directionless. Then, exactly a year after we started trying, we got a positive pregnancy test! We were obviously ecstatic, and I felt overwhelmed with a sense of purpose and hope for the future. 

I had found a job by this point but when the morning sickness set in they gave me no choice but to resign. I didn't mind too much because this was my purpose, I was growing a child and fulfilling my dream. But then finances started to get tight with only one income. This made me so anxious, especially with the coming of an extra family member. I felt a strong need to contribute to our income, but again my degree and experience stopped me. I needed a job I could do from home (that didn't make me want to pull my hair out) but nothing worked out or felt right. 

After expressing my anxiety to my mom and my husband they both reminded me of the same thing. My goal was to be a stay at home mom, I wanted that more than I wanted a career, and my husband and I had agreed that when it came time to start a family that I would stay home with the kids and he would support our family financially. This helped relieve a lot of my guilt for not contributing financially and I started to realize what my job was. 

Maybe I couldn't provide an income, but I could still help financially. My family needed someone who knew how to manage money properly. They needed someone who could make things stretch when there wasn't much, who could make wise money decisions, and who could organize the funds to put it to best use. 

It was then that I started to realize how much help my education could be. My degree was made up of 3 certificated, basic accounting, entrepreneurship, and human and family relations. I had a love for business and hoped to start one of my own at some point. As I thought about it, I became more and more sure that a family is kind of like a business in a lot of ways. My education in accounting helped me in my new role as finance manager of our family business (which we affectionately call "Allen Inc."). My entrepreneurship certificate gave me a knowledge and understanding of small business and starting one, which was exactly what we were doing with our family. 

This idea of a family being a business was kind of mind blowing to me, and the more I thought about it the more I realized how important a mom's role is and just how many hats she wears. I wasn't just a chef or a housekeeper, or even just the finance manager, I was also the psychologist, teacher, life coach, spiritual leader, and so many other things! I started to realize that not just were my certificates very helpful when running the "family business", but so were all the other classes I took while jumping around to different majors. I took classes in teaching, psychology, language learning, sewing, art, amongst others, which I knew would come in handy. 

I am so so thankful for my education and that even though I almost gave up a few times, I stuck it out and got my degree. Not only did it give me the valuable skills and knowledge I use every day in my new "job", it will also serve as an example to my kinds. I have come to learn the value of education, and not just for a career. By having completed college myself I am an example to my kids of its importance, and can use both my example and my education to help and support my family.