Carly Coursey

Everyone says to go to college. But what do you do when nobody in your family went to college?

The first time I went to college, right out of high school, I struggled with the financial aid forms and application deadlines and fees. It was so confusing. Somewhere in the process, I stopped thinking about other colleges and I only applied to one, the University of Houston. Not only did I get in, I got a Creative Writing scholarship and a spot in the Honors College. It felt like my life was finally coming together. I lived on campus in a dorm room. I had a brand new computer.

Things should have gone okay, but they didn’t.

I eagerly signed up for 14 units my first semester. I never spoke to an advisor. I took College Algebra in a lecture hall with 200 other students. I didn’t know I had dyscalculia, just that it was impossible. Everything was impossible.

Less than two months into my first semester of college, I dramatically dropped out. I moved to New Orleans with my boyfriend and got a job at a voodoo shop. I still wanted to go to college. It was just so hard to figure out.

I used my new computer I’d gotten for college to play a new game, EverQuest. I played so much that the company that made the game hired me in customer service to be a Game Master. I applied for and received a design apprenticeship and became a video game designer. I did that for five years. Even though I worked very hard all week, I started taking classes at San Diego Mesa College in 2005. It was a lot easier to apply to community college. I took a variety of classes but only one or two at a time. I did a little better in school but not much. I still had never spoken to an academic advisor. I flat out failed an Intro to Video Game Design class and since that was my job, I felt like a failure all-round. I became depressed and stopped going to class and started doing very poorly at work. When I burned out there, I knew something was wrong. But I didn’t know what.

I decided that I wanted to work for myself. I cashed out my 401k and went to the International Professional School of Bodywork here in San Diego, or IPSB. I took 1,000 hours of holistic health and massage training, then 250 hours of teacher training. I taught at the massage college and supervised at the massage clinic. Another 200 hours of yoga teacher training from Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga rounded out my new career education.

I loved massage therapy. But I didn’t love the ebb and flow of money. It was so difficult in California to find and keep a place to live. I had my daughter during this time. Post-partum depression hit hard and some severe mental health troubles landed me with a Bipolar 1 diagnosis after a manic episode. It took me a long time to get stable, a few years. But in 2017, I started thinking about college again.

I chose Palomar College because it was close, and because they offered a Library Information & Technology certificate. I figured it was a job that was steady that I could do and still write, and maybe I would like it. I’d been applying to libraries for over a year and had gotten no interviews.

Palomar College’s LIT program is one year, but it took me three. I was working, raising my daughter, and also getting general ed done. I got an internship, my certificate, and I stayed another year working on general educational requirements to transfer. It was hard. It was very hard. I still had no academic advisor, but the librarian professors were wonderful and caring and aided me. During this time I got my first library job with the County, at last. I worked intermittently then was hired full-time at a branch.

I planned to attend Cal State San Marcos, or maybe San Diego State. I applied to both and was accepted to BOTH! UCSD seemed out of my reach. I was so excited. Unfortunately, neither university offered upper level English/Creative Writing classes in the evenings, after I got off work.

I was crushed. My mother had gotten very ill and I took two years off school. She died in 2022.

But I don’t know, I guess I am stubborn. I started feeling a little better. I decided that only an online, asynchronous program would work for me. And I greatly dislike Arizona, so Southern New Hampshire University was the choice. Their 8-week terms allowed me to get through my Junior year of college in 8 months. I was assigned an academic advisor who has guided me through it all. I got a new shiny job at the Geisel Library at UCSD.

Next May, 25 years after I graduated from high school, I will have my Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. I only have seven classes left.

Yesterday, I applied to San Jose State University’s graduate degree program. I plan to pursue a Master of Library and Information Science. I will be a librarian soon enough.

It has been a RIDE and I feel so fortunate to have had such a rewarding and meandering path.

If you know me, you know I had to write about it all. It will be in my memoir.