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15 Weeks, Switch, and Start Over

Jo An Fox-Wright Maddox
Age of Awareness
Published in
5 min readAug 2, 2021

Before, during, and after I spent four years in college majoring in Spanish and minoring in French, I worked in offices. I ran a switchboard in a bank — I mean, a real switchboard with wires and holes, like the one Lily Tomlin had on “Laugh In.” (Google it, youngsters.) I worked as a merchandising secretary in a shoe factory. I worked as a filing clerk in a student loan center and as a typist in a Child Guidance Center. The one thing all my jobs had in common was my getting yelled at for talking too much to my co-workers, which I did because I was bored stiff with sitting in an office for hours at a time pushing paper. I had intended to become a Spanish or French teacher, but I never became fluent enough to feel comfortable, so I dropped student teaching and became unemployable in teaching. Hence the office work.

After an awkward phase of getting married, having a daughter, getting divorced, remarrying, and having a son, I decided to go back to college to change my major and get my teaching certificate, which in New York state means getting a masters degree. It took me four years of part time classes (no summers) but by the time I was ready to go to work, my younger child was ready to go into first grade, so my child care problem was solved. Except for four years when I taught high school, I spent the rest of my career teaching as an adjunct (part-time) professor at two community colleges in my area. I never got yelled at for talking too much again.

The major difference between being a high school teacher and being a college…

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Age of Awareness
Age of Awareness

Published in Age of Awareness

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Jo An Fox-Wright Maddox
Jo An Fox-Wright Maddox

Written by Jo An Fox-Wright Maddox

Former English professor ponders life, love, and how to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

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