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To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, it’s been a long – but
not so very strange – trip.
Some stops along the way since graduation:
Houston, Tx.
Hoping to postpone any serious career
decisions, I became a VISTA volunteer working in a senior
citizen’s center that served a mostly-African-American and
Mexican-American population (bi-lingual bingo, anyone?). I
learned that I could cross social work off my list of
potential careers.
New York City
I went back home to Chappaqua, NY and then
moved to Manhattan to work for AFS, an international student
exchange organization. I learned that working with
international students was lots of fun, but the student
exchange biz might not be a long-term career.
Lawrenceville, N.J.
In 1977 I married Ned Miller, whom I had met
junior year on a study abroad program in Colombia, and began
an adventure that still finds us “together, more or less in
line.” I never even considered changing my
satisfyingly-unusual Finnish last name. We moved into
faculty housing at the Lawrenceville School (where Ned
taught Spanish to the young gentlemen). I learned that
commuting 2 hours door-to-door between Princeton Junction
and Manhattan got old fast, and my whole-hearted support of
single-sex education for women did not translate into a
similar appreciation for single-sex education for adolescent
boys.
New Brunswick, N.J.
In 1979 we escaped from Lawrenceville, and I
started a Master’s program in English as a Second Language
at Rutgers while continuing to work part-time at AFS. Ned
began commuting to Citibank for a job as an international
banker.
Madison, N.J.
I started teaching ESL at the County College
of Morris and concluded that I had found the career I
wanted. In 1983, Paul Kangas-Miller was born.
Strafford, Pa.
A job opportunity for Ned in Philadelphia
brought us to the Main Line suburbs, and I settled into
teaching ESL part-time at Montgomery County Community
College. Sons Mark (1985) and Chris (1990) were born. I
learned that spending 3 days a week in my classroom and the
other 2 days doing kid stuff or snatching some time for
myself was truly the best of both worlds.
In the mid-nineties, I joined the Sandwich
Generation, trying to combine caring for elderly relatives
in declining health with the realities of having 3 young
kids, a husband who traveled a lot, and a job. While I
always felt that I was never devoting enough time to any of
the above, I learned to “hang it up and see what tomorrow
brings.”
I’ve now been teaching ESL for a total of 28
years, and I’m still very happy with a part-time academic
schedule (as an “Adjunct Senior Lecturer,” I’m certainly not
in it for the money!). I have embraced my roots as a
farmer’s daughter and plant a big vegetable garden every
year. When my church acquired a sister parish in Guatemala,
I led a group of parishioners to Chimaltenango. I was
delighted to be once again in Latin America and to discover
that my skills in Spanish had not completely atrophied.
Indeed, at this point, with the help of many more trips,
frequent emails, and the almost-nightly viewing of
telenovelas on Univision, I’ve regained near-fluency. I
have learned, however, that simultaneous interpretation of
sermons is not my forte.
South Hadley
I have been
to almost all our reunions, and I find that I enjoy each one
more than the last. Being “whoa, whoa, baby, back where I
belong” on the most beautiful campus in the country is
always a treat, and I love renewing connections with all you
uncommon women. Mt. Holyoke will always be a favorite stop
as “I just keep truckin’ on” for what I hope will be many
more years.
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