Missed fun. And so my father then said, no, we're not paying for this.
You get you a job. So I went out and I worked for six years. When I was
at Berry O'Kelly, I had an English teacher whose name was Mary Carter.
And Mrs. Carter said to me once, why don't you think… And the Principal,
Mr. Moore, at different times, they said to me, why don't you think
about going to Meredith. They thought I was a good enough student. I
looked at them and laughed. This was before I went to Cary High. And so
I was in the tenth grade. And I just looked at them and laughed and
said, I don't want to Meredith. Interesting enough, when I went to St.
Aug and did not do well, came out and worked for four or five years, and
when I decided, I was a keypunch operator at Wachovia Bank. They called
them keypunch operators, they don't call them that now. I don't know
what they call them, I think they're data entry people or something, but
anyway. I said, I cannot do this for the rest of my life. And it was at
that time I thought about going back to school. And I began to take
courses, I think I had a course at N.C. State, I
Page 19
think I had a course at Meredith. And the Admissions Officer at N.C.
State looked at my transcripts from St. Aug, and I think I had one A and
that was in English, which is what my major is. And he looked at me and
he said, now this A, and obviously these other grades don't count. And I
said, yes Sir, I know. He looked at that A and he said, now you know
that A in English is equal to a C here at N.C. State. I just looked at
him and said, oh, okay, and I did not go back. I chose to go to
Meredith. So it's very interesting that I eventually ended up at
Meredith and that's where I graduated from in terms of my under-grad
years. And so I went to Meredith, as I said, totally different group of
people, or for lack of a better word, class of people and I really do
genuinely mean it was very different from, at the time, Cary High. And
so I thoroughly enjoyed my stay there. I was very active and majored in
English and enjoyed my years there. My sister behind me, Deborah,
graduated from Meredith. So while I did not think I was an influence on
my siblings, I ended up being an influence on my siblings, and in
particular Deborah. And the others tell me also that I did, but
particularly on Deborah. She went to Cary High and she also graduated
from Meredith, so we're both Meredith graduates. I graduated from
Meredith and I taught in high school, at [unknown] High
School for three years, and then decided to go back and get my Masters.
I went to Teachers College at Columbia University to get my Masters and
then decided that I wanted to teach on the collegiate level. And I came
back and taught at N.C. State for three years. I left N.C. State and
went to Hampton Institute, or Hampton Institute, it's now Hampton
University, in Virginia, I taught there. And then I came back to Raleigh
because my mother became ill and died. So I came back to Raleigh because
my youngest sister was twelve or thirteen at the time and so I came back
for my next oldest sister, Deborah, to be in the house with her. So we
were in the house with and raising Adonna. I just kind of did odd jobs,
because I did not know what I wanted to do. I had always kept up with
data entry so I would do data entry
Page 20 jobs. My
sisters looked in the paper once and said, Gwen, Wake Tech has a
position for an English teacher. I had only been back maybe a year, so I
had not been in the area that long and I came back at an odd time. I did
not want to go back to teach high school. So I said, oh okay, I'll
apply. I honestly did not think, because in the Black community, Wake
Tech did not have a very good reputation toward Blacks. And so I
thought, yeah right. But I thought oh well, I can apply and I will do
that, and I was hired. And so now I've been here almost eighteen years.
So I've been here the longest of any place I've been. So this is where
I've been. I started out in the English department. There is a
developmental education program here, and at that time it was called
Academic Enrichment. And there was only one English teacher. The
department head at that time's name was Ann Tech asked me if I would
like to come to the department, and I said, Oh I don't care. And I did,
I came into the department and loved it. I loved teaching the
developmental students. And so I taught them. When she decided to leave,
she asked me would I be interested in being the department head, and I
said, no, not really but I don't care. So she said she would recommend.
I said, I don't care. And I really didn't think I would get it because
there had been those in the department longer than I had been, but what
I didn't know was that she had asked each one of them and each one of
them said No, they didn't want it. So I ended up being the department
head, and have been the department head for fifteen and a half years.
And then recently, this past January, I decided I had done that long
enough. I just think there comes a time in your life sometimes when you
know you've done all you're supposed to do in that position. It was a
very different department. We moved from only four teachers, there was
Ann Tench, Steve Jones, Kay Holland and myself, just the four of us, so
from four teachers to eleven full-time and nine part-time, so the
department just grew while I had it. And so it was almost like, okay now
what else is there for me to do. And it was a very different program.
And so I thought it was
Page 21 it was time to do
something different. So right now I'm in the Academic Advising Center,
and I love advising students and always have enjoyed it, even when I was
the department head. I loved advising students and talking to them about
where you want to go, what kind of plans do you have, what do you want
to be when you grow up, kind of thing. And so I have enjoyed that and
when this position came open, I talked to the person who is now the Dean
of College transfers who used to be in my department and I used to be
her supervisor. And so now she's mine in a sense. And it's a wonderful
opportunity, so I asked her about it and she said, oh yeah, I'd love to
have you. So I moved here. So I'm in the Academic Advising Center for
college transfer students, and I thoroughly enjoy it. So I've only been
in this position since July 1.