Miss Alex

I wrote a few weeks ago about one of my heroes.  Got an e-mail this morning from another one.

When I was in graduate school, Miss Alex was one of the administrative assistants in my program's main office.  A beautiful ebony-skinned woman with tidy dreadlocks and a musical lilt in her voice from her native West Indies, she had a smile and a cheerful greeting for everyone who came in.  Over time, we became good friends.

Life hadn't given her an easy hand.  She married young, to a philanderer who mistreated her.  She eventually kicked him to the curb and raised their three children alone, even going into the Army to support them.  When I met her, the older two were grown and gone and the youngest was still in high school.

She had dreamed of being a doctor as a child, but life got in the way.  A few years after I met her, she quit her job at the graduate school: she had decided that she still wanted to be a doctor and was going for it.  Her last child was done with school and she could finally think of herself again.

She took classes at the local community college, then finished a bachelor's degree at one of the Seven Sisters schools that had a program for non-traditional students.  She finished some post-baccalaureate courses at another university afterward, and is currently preparing for the MCAT (the medical school entrance exam) and saving money for medical school interview expenses.  She has still been working while putting herself through school, so the pace has been slow, but she is determined.  She wants to be a psychiatrist eventually, and she will be a damned good one.

Thinking of you today, Miss Alex.  Proud of you and proud to know you.