I’ve been a mom for a while now and I really love it. I would never change the decision we made for me to leave the workforce. I truly feel there is nothing as important for our family and our boys than for me to be here for them. But sometimes I worry about what they are going to think of me as they are growing up. And sometimes I think that I spent over 23 years going to school and got my PhD in Computer Science and now I am a "stay at home mom". I question if I wasted all that time. Luckily, in my chosen field, I didn’t go into debt with all my schooling. I was lucky and all my graduate schooling was paid for by the institution I went to plus I was salaried as a teaching assistant and then as a research assistant. I will always be proud of accomplishing my PhD and of the research I did for my PhD. There are days when I would like to continue my research in automatic computer generated information representation. I loved the work and really feel that I contributed to the field. At the same time, I feel like all my work and schooling is allowing me to be a better mother to my two wonderful boys. I have a breath and depth of knowledge that will help me raise them and help them throughout their lives. I will always be able to help them with their homework. I don’t have to worry about them outpacing me by the time they are in fourth grade. It will sound selfish, but I don’t want my boys to look at me like “why don’t you do anything?” or to not realize that I am a very intelligent, smart woman who made the choice to stay home and put all my intelligence into raising two boys to become happy, productive, terrific men.
I get this question a lot: “Are you going to go back to work after the boys are in school?” Of course, I could go back to work. I have the intelligence and the credentials. But do I want to? At this point, my gut feeling is not full time. Yes, I will need something to take up some of those hours when the boys are in school, but I feel that it may be even more important for me to be home for them then than it is now. Once they are in school, they will be subject to much more peer pressure and peer interaction than they are now. We all know that learning to deal with peers without Mommy or Daddy around is very important. But how do they learn how to deal with those situations if they can’t come home and talk to us about that. I don’t know about everyone else, but I was much more likely to talk to mom right when I got home from school (when things were fresh in my mind) than hours later. There will be so many new issues for the boys to deal with, things that are much more emotionally complicated than there are now, and I just feel like it will be invaluable to them to have me at home when they get home. Or even to have me at home if they accidentally forget a piece of important homework or the field trip form. And I think about puberty; all those changes, both physically and emotionally. I know that when I was growing up, it was extremely nice to know that mom was at home and would always be there if I needed her. I want to give that same feeling to my boys. Also, I believe that if a parent is at home that kids are less likely to get into trouble after school. And there are so many things these days for kids to get into and ways for kids to get themselves in trouble I want to do everything I can to help them through those troubling and confusing years. For us that includes having a parent at home.
So, what will I do with those free hours. Right now I volunteer as a tutor one morning a week while my husband stays home with the boys (more on how this benefits our family later). I would really like to do this more once the boys are in school. Right now I tutor young women who are single and pregnant and women who have had really tough lives (poor home situations growing up, drug abuse, physical abuse, criminal activities, etc). For many, we get them ready to take the test to get their GEDs, others we work with to get ready for community college or to enter the workforce. My speciality is math (apparently it is hard to find competent math tutors in this type of situation) although I will tutor in whatever subject is needed. I find that most of the young women believe that they can not do math; that they are bad at it. I try to instill in each girl that she can do it, that math doesn’t have to be hard. I love being a tutor. I love trying to think of one more way to explain a concept so that my student will “get it.” It feels amazing when you have been working with a student and then you see the light bulb go on in their head and they look at you and say “but that is so easy.” That is when I know that I am doing my job well. So, I think that I will probably tutor more often once both boys are in school.
I would also like to volunteer at my sons’ schools. It is appalling how little we give to our school systems. Obviously, I have an extensive background in computer programming. I could volunteer my time in a computer lab or even in the office doing all those little administrative things (like copying and filing, etc) that are needed to allow the teachers to spend their precious time teaching our kids.
I also have thought about doing freelance work or part time teaching at a community college. I could tutor in a variety of subjects, most probably in computer science or math. I could do freelance website design and upkeep. I have dabbled in real estate website design and that looks promising as more and more buyers and sellers are utilizing the web.
I would also like to design a beginning computer programming course. I have taken and TA’d my share of beginning and upper level programming courses and have experienced great courses and horrible courses. I would like to design a course template, complete with text (probably a web textbook) and course projects. I have found that the beginning level courses are the most lacking and yet contain the fundamentals upon which all future programming courses are based. We need to give our young students a good basis (sound programming practices as well as a basic knowledge of programming structures) from which they can advance and innovate. There have been too many incredibly bright students who have been turned off to programming because these first level courses are boring and inadequately taught. It isn’t glamorous to teach students how to use for loops. It isn’t groundbreaking research to write a program that outputs “Hello World” to the monitor. But why should our first level courses be composed of writing a five line program that outputs “Hello World”? We need to show our students what they can make a computer do. We can design projects that aren’t mind numbing, yet aren’t too complicated for the beginning programmer. We can design projects that will allow those who are truly interested to go farther and explore deeper while at the same time be appropriate for those who need a little more help or need a little more time to truly understand the power of programming. These are my goals for a course that I hope to be able to design once both my children are in school.
