Melissa's Story
by Martha Macdonald

“It’s taken me a long time to find myself,” Melissa says, her gray-blue eyes wistful, “but I finally have, and York Tech is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long while.  I feel a freedom here that I’ve never experienced, and I am getting something nobody can ever take away from me.”

 Married in Ohio in her late teens, Melissa is the mother of four children.  After the family moved to the Carolinas, first to Charlotte, then to Rock Hill, Melissa did something for herself.  “I got my driver’s license at 34, then my GED at 35.”

After working in a school cafeteria for a three semesters, she decided to try college.  She came to York Tech to major in OST.  After taking several courses, Melissa knew that keyboarding and her heart did not mesh.  Writing was her passion. “It always was,” she explains.  “I wrote 17 stories in high school, but I threw them all away.  I didn’t think they were good enough.”

Melissa turned to poetry.  She fell in love with the poetry of Oscar Wilde.  “I feel an identity with his poetry.  I feel as if I’m there in his poems.”

In April of 2006, when she was taking English 155, Melissa shared some of her poems with Dr. Macdonald who encouraged her to write more.  “You have a gift.”

While working on her career development paper for that class, Melissa realized that OST was not for her.  “I suddenly knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and talking with Dr. Macdonald and Dr. Oppermann helped me.  They encouraged me and listened to my stories.  They answered my questions.”

Melissa loves literature, and she hopes to transfer to Winthrop, then to go on for her M.A. and Ph.D.  At present, she works in the library at York Tech.  “I love the atmosphere of the library.  I love being around books, especially old books, and I imagine what the writers felt when they wrote.”