The Education of Terri Dee Mork Speirs

Women do 2/3 of the world's work but receive only 10% of the world's income.

Women's education is the most powerful predictor of lower birth rates.

Of 1.2 billion people living in poverty worldwide, 70% are women.

Women own around only 1% of the world's land.

Women are 2/3 of the 1 billion+ illiterate adults who have no access to basic education.
 
And yet there is one lucky woman, lucky beyond words, who just might walk away in a few weeks with a Master of Fine Arts Degree. Thanks to willing references, a scholarship from the Women of the ELCA, a student loan, an understanding family, and the good fortune of being born in a time and place whereby she could imagine school in the realm of her reality.

And thanks to her desire to go west. That is the stupider part of the story. Because the only reason she wanted to go west was so to escape the pain she felt when she lost her eastern-bound job. As if going 1,000 miles in the other direction would make her feel better. It didn't. But thinking about it did.
 
She was so bound and determined to go to Antioch University in Los Angeles that she applied only to that one MFA program. There was no back-up plan. When she didn't get in, she agreed to be put on the waiting list. When she still didn't get in, she applied a second time. When she still didn't get in, she agreed to again be put on the waiting list. And when she finally got in, it was like Antioch had found her.
 
She was so focused on going west that she hadn't even checked out the fact that Antioch shared her value of social justice. She hadn't checked out its theories on education. During her first writing residency, she didn't know until halfway through the week that half of the instructors were actually students. It turned out to be a place where students and teachers learned together, which, coincidentally happened to be her philosophy of education. There was no hierarchy of the smarter people. She hadn't known that human decency would be valued above all. Which, as happenstance would have it, also matched her way of thinking.

When Antioch found her she didn't know that her cousin-in-law lived three miles from campus, had a spare house, an extra car, another bicycle, and boundless hospitality, thus saving her approximately $7,500 in hotel expenses and gaining her exactly three additional family members for the rest of her life. Not to mention hiking in the mountains and biking on the beach.

She didn't know that writers don't simply get exiled. They write about exile. They don't simply feel deceit, heartbreak, love, and truth. They seek to understand it. Baltimore had spit her out. Los Angeles scooped her up. Des Moines held her tight while she wrestled these real and imaginary demons and angels, for some dumb reason manifested in terms of miles and horizons. She learned that her exile and heartbreak were far less serious than others'.

Now, two years later, she feels all melancholy about it all. About what she put her family through to make this work. About how they happily obliged. About how her husband worked double overtime so she could write. About her kids who didn't get tucked in for about 50 nights. About her student loan and how it will be paid. About the things she's learned and the people she's met. About the fact that Mona Simpson keeps popping up on her Facebook as "someone she probably knows." She doesn't, but apparently nine of her Facebook friends do. She's now two degrees separated through nine lives to this famous writer, you know, not to name drop, but Steve Jobs' sister. About the fact that her mentor, Hope Edelman, is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and one of the most insightful teachers she's ever had. Yes, she now shamelessly name drops.

But mostly, she's infinitely grateful.

And now, she will go back to work on her senior seminar and reading prep, lest this all be a dream that goes puff into the night.

With love, T