Let's Go, Jane!

On Tuesday morning, in the presence of my parents, sisters, and Carey, I joined hundreds of classmates in walking across the stage and accepting a diploma from Fordham University’s School of Social Service. I can now officially put the letters “MSW” after my last name. In 10 days I am taking the licensing exam, and hope to amend that to “LMSW.” It feels like quite an achievement, at the age of 53, to receive my first (and likely last) graduate degree.

How did I get here? To answer that question, I’d need to take you back a few years. It was the summer of 2021 and we were still in the grip of a global pandemic. My family and I were largely protected. Work and school had switched over to remote. As I watched my fellow humans struggle on the news and social media, it felt too easy, like I needed to be doing more to give back.

At that point I had already left my last fundraising job and was running a native plant nursery with a friend. I reached out to a colleague at a nonprofit and offered to help with fundraising on a volunteer basis. After about six months of trying to get things going from a distance, I suggested that I start coming into the office one day a week.

For the next two and a half years, that’s exactly what I did. And I found, as regular volunteers often do, that I got way more out of it than I gave. I quickly became an honorary member of the staff. I got to know board members and donors, and developed a close relationship with the executive director, a friendship that endures to this day. I also realized that while I had spent my career in fundraising, bringing in the necessary funds to make the work possible, what I really wanted to do was be on the program side, doing the actual work.

In the summer of 2022 I had the idea of going back to school for my masters. It was too late to apply for that fall, but I found that Fordham offered the option of taking up to two classes as a non-matriculating student. I registered for my first class and was hooked. We were the first class to resume studies in person. I applied and was accepted to enroll as a full student for the spring semester. 

For the next five semesters I took 2-3 classes and completed two field internships, one at the nonprofit where I’d been helping with fundraising and the other at a local medical school in their office of student mental health and wellness.

I worked really hard in graduate school. I earned straight As and ended up with a final GPA of 3.98. I wrote dozens of research papers and read hundreds of textbook pages. Prior to graduate school I was an avid reader of both fiction and nonfiction. I haven’t been able to read anything non school-related in a couple years, I’m hoping that ability returns soon.

Looking back on the summer of 2022, it’s hard to remember what it felt like to be that woman. She had a different life, a different last name, even. She had a husband and two teenage boys at home and a mortgage. Having just turned 50, she wanted more from life, more challenge, more adventure, more connection. And here she is, three years later, about to embark on an epic solo travel adventure, followed by a whole new career in social work. It’s amazing how much can change in just three short years.