I’ve been selected as the Woman of Achievement for a foundation in my area. There are several, for different areas. I was nominated and won for education. At the time I was nominated I was teaching in four different ways and age groups. (College, high school classroom, middle school coop class, homeschooling.)

My dean won for the Arts. She’s an artist. In fact, one of her paintings hangs in the English office and I would love to own it. (I asked. It’s not for sale.)

It’s hard to know how excited you should be about things like that. But today I went somewhere and someone who barely knows me said, “So you have a PhD?” I said I did. Then we talked about it for a bit. And I think I asked how he knew. He said that he saw that I had won Woman of Achievement for Education. That was cool. He goes every year.

About half an hour later someone else was talking to my son and said, “Did you know your mom won the Woman of Achievement award for Education?”

We both thought it was more cool after other people knew about it.

My husband nominated me. He can be very persuasive. I guess he was on this.