Sometimes our alumni tell us stories that are just so inspiring that we want to share them in their own words. Ann Wilson, class of 1973, has one of those stories. 

Thank you TC3 for being my launching pad. I don’t think I could have done it without you.

 

It was the winter of 1971. At the time, my husband was a doctoral student at Cornell University. I was a young mother at home with our one-year-old daughter, watching the snow mount against the windows of our married student housing apartment. I found myself in a dreamy revery, wondering what my own future would hold.

It was on that snowy day I decided to go back to school. Cornell was financially out of the question. We didn’t have two nickels to rub together. But TC3 was pretty close by and with access to the work study program, I was able to get through a two-year A.A. degree without debt. Those were the days. My first work study assignment at was in the Office of Continuing Education typing mailing labels. No, I was not a great typist, and my boss would complain bitterly if I made even a single mistake. But I persisted. I really had no choice.

One afternoon, a very beautiful woman came into our office to hang her coat in the closet. Her name was Susan K. Bravman, a psychology professor. After hanging up her coat, she stood in front of my desk and said  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"  I replied, “Typing mailing labels.”  She looked at me and said, "No! As of this minute you are working for me."  I couldn't gather my up belongings fast enough.

To this day, I do not know what it was she saw in me, but I ended up working for her in the psychology office.  It felt like I had just been saved by a magic fairy godmother.

Over the next months, Susan took me under her wings. She took a personal interest in my development. I ended up assisting in her psychology classes, as well as doing some basic office work. It was like I had been seen for the first time in my life. In addition to Susan's investment in me, I remember fondly many of my TC3 professors, like Carol Woodward and Sandra Rubai, who also believed in me and inspired me to do my best in every course. They expected excellence and they prepared me well.

After TC3, I went on to earn a B.A. at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where my husband was a professor. I was then accepted at the Tyler School of Art of Temple University where I earned my Master’s in Fiber Arts. I went on to teach fine arts at the Shipley School, a private preparatory school in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, for nine years. Then in 1985, I was very badly injured in a head-on collision. It was a chiropractor who put me together again and gave me back my life.

Two years after that fateful head-on collision at the age of 37, I was enrolled in a pre-med program at West Chester University. I was consistently one of the top students in all of my classes—kudos to my beginnings at TC3. Following that program of study, we moved across the country to Portland, Oregon where I earned my doctorate degree at Western States Chiropractic College in 1994. Following graduation, at the age of 45, I began my career as a chiropractic physician in private practice, owning my own beautiful clinic. I retired in 2015 after a long and fulfilling career taking care of my family of wonderful patients. It was some of the most meaningful work I had ever imagined I would be called to.

The question I always ask myself is, "What was it that Susan saw in me that day?"  I certainly didn't share her vision at the time, but that's where my student life began and likely why my life continued to unfold in ways I could not have imagined.

I hope that TC3 continues to be a place where a small-town northern California girl like me--that young 1970's mother who longed for a meaningful intellectual life--can thrive and find her place in the world. I wish I could go back and share with that young me what I knew about her future. She never would have believed me. I can hardly believe it myself.

Thank you TC3 for being my launching pad. I don’t think I could have done it without you.

-Ann Wilson, Class of 1973