"What's Stopping You?"

Kathy's Story

© 2005 Marilyn Havner Walker, MS

All of us eventually hit a few bumps, potholes, red lights and detours on the road of life.  A few of us intentionally turn off the highway of life onto side roads seeking adventure and fulfillment. 

And then there’s Kathy.  She was bored, overwhelmed at times, and hit just about every barrier there was.  And still kept going.

By some accounts Kathy’s journey didn’t start out too successfully.  In fact, Kathy was told all her life that she “wouldn’t amount to much” and would probably end up “working in Woolworth’s” – an old five and dime store.  Despite the lack of encouragement she managed to enter business college after high school.  A few weeks after she started she met Joe, a junior at a nearby university.  Before her freshman year ended, Kathy hit her first big pothole – pregnancy.   Married at 19, a baby born on her twentieth birthday, Kathy had no time to study and the journey she set out on stopped.  Red Light!

After the baby was born Kathy did not return to school.  She got a part-time job while her husband completed his education.  After his graduation he accepted a job with a government agency in Washington, DC, and Kathy’s young family moved. 

Kathy felt pressured in her new circle of friends.  Everyone was college educated.   So Kathy enrolled in a community college.  She received little direction for her studies and didn’t particularly care what degree she earned.  She simply felt compelled to get a college education to consider herself an equal to her new acquaintances.  Kathy studied continuously for two years, only to have her studies interrupted again when her husband’s job transferred the family overseas.  While living in the Philippines, Kathy and her husband had a second child.  He died after five days.  Side-tracked by this tragedy but not de-railed, Kathy and Joe adopted a baby girl.

Joe was eventually transferred again, this time to Mexico City.  He re-located there with their son while Kathy and their five-year-old daughter returned to the United States and Kathy returned to school.  Initially Kathy was supported by her husband despite the thousands of miles of separation.  But that didn’t last long.  Kathy and Joe ultimately divorced. 

Up to this part of Kathy’s journey, she always had a man in her life, at least helping steer her along the way.  First she depended on her father and then, her husband.  Now for the first time Kathy had to take care of herself and her young daughter. 

But Kathy didn’t stop.  Despite the divorce and the sometimes overwhelming responsibilities of being a single mother, Kathy continued with school and, at the age of 38, completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in American History and Political Science from the University of Rochester (NY).   She had hit another red light and made the Right Turn On Red.  Again. 

That alone would make for a good success story.  But for Kathy there was more.  An education wasn’t the end of her road. It was just another stop on her road to a better destination than she imagined.

Armed with a history and political science degree, no experience and a lack of self-confidence, Kathy met the job market and lost.  She took a job that was a poor fit, settling for employment as a secretary.  Unfortunately, clerical skills were not her forte.  In fact, she couldn’t even type.  

What people liked about Kathy was her ability to communicate and build relationships.  In business, we often refer to these personal strengths as people skills or emotional intelligence.   She got the job in spite of her skills deficit and eventually was promoted to be an executive secretary, working for a director of information technology.  After working in that capacity for a couple of years Kathy became bored and transferred to a different department. 

That bored and unmotivated feeling is shared by many employees in many companies every day.  There are two often cited causes:  If what we value is not being adequately met in a position, we will become bored and unfulfilled.  A second common cause of turnover and burnout is related to abilities.  If our abilities exceed those of the job, we will become dispassionate and unchallenged.  Kathy’s lack of self confidence led her to believe she didn’t have the skills to take on a more challenging position.  The resulting boredom was to be expected.  She just wasn’t exercising her passions or her abilities. 

After Kathy was transferred, her former boss began to regret her departure.  Even though Kathy’s clerical skills left something to be desired, her friendly and outgoing nature, her ability to interact with people from all walks of life, her high level of energy and motivation, and her willingness to learn what she needed to know couldn’t be matched by her replacements.  Soon the IT director was on the phone recruiting Kathy.   She hired Kathy back, with a hefty pay increase, and included Kathy on a five-day workforce development training with professional staff members. 

For the first three days, Kathy hung in the background, considering herself the new … and inexperienced … kid on the block.    She observed her co-workers interacting about a variety of topics, including how to challenge and confront each other appropriately.  On the fourth day, something changed.  The challenges and confrontation were aimed at her.  “Why are you a secretary, anyway?  You’re not even a very good one.  You should be doing something else.”  At the end of the day Kathy felt beaten and miserable.  She didn’t return to the final day of the training.

On the following Monday her boss called Kathy into her office.  The woman apologized that the session was “more confrontational” than anybody anticipated.  She asked Kathy what she would have done if she hadn’t been a secretary.  Kathy didn’t even hesitate.  She wished she could have been a social worker. 

Unfortunately she had only figured that out after she finished her education.  She had even looked into a program at a nearby university, even though she had no intention of returning to college.  When her boss asked her, “What is stopping you?” she couldn’t answer.  She thought, “What IS stopping me?” 

She walked out of her boss’s office and called the university.  She applied immediately and “never looked back.”  

At the age of 48 Kathy obtained a Master of Social Work from Syracuse University with a GPA very close to 4.0.  Since that day Kathy has been enjoying life as a clinical social worker in a day treatment program for children with mental health and mental retardation problems. 

To what does she attribute her success?

• "I’m a real survivor.”  She had to be in order to survive the rigors of her life during graduate school.  She still was raising her daughter.  She drove two hours to class several times a week.  She was the only one in her program that wasn’t already working in the field and lacked that experiential learning.  On top of that, a week into her final year she fell down a flight of stairs and lost the use of both of her arms for several months.  “I had no place to go but forward.”  She finished that final year in spite of needing help even to dress and being all but incapacitated by her accident.  Doing something she was passionate about enabled her to keep going.

• She utilized the help of friends and family.  Although some people wondered why she was getting a second degree, and others told her she should just “give up,” particularly after her accident, Kathy also had friends and family offering her help: They carried her books, typed her papers, drove her to class, cared for her daughter.  Not unlike most women, Kathy found support and help from other women.

• She planned ahead and didn’t let anything stop her.  Kathy mapped out her road long before she set out on her journey.  From the very beginning she knew exactly what she needed to do in order to finish her training.  And she did it.  For her that included change – quitting her job to attend school full time for her final year, penny pinching and having exactly enough to live on for that final year of school.  Her journey also included a few detours like recovering from a major injury and adjusting how she would achieve her goals.  Although the accident certainly slowed her down, the fact that she hadn’t planned on that injury didn’t stop her.  Rather than use that as a reason (or excuse) to quit she instead figured out what she needed to do to keep moving.

Like most of us Kathy has found some smooth sailing in spite of the bumps, red lights and detours.  Kathy simply never gave up – she learned how to Make The Right Turn On Red.  Over and over again.  Had Kathy stopped, dozens and dozens of lives would have missed out on being the recipient of all the gifts Kathy has to share.

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This article appeared in www.BusinessWomanPA.com