Michelle Matthews:
CLASS OF 1982
Marathon High SchoolClass of 1982
Marathon, ON
McMaster University - MedicineClass of 2012
Hamilton, ON
Acadia UniversityClass of 2007
Wolfville, NS
City University of New YorkClass of 1995
New york, NY
York UniversityClass of 1993
Toronto, ON
Michelle's Story
Life
Although I'm still in denial that it's been 25 years since graduation, I'm looking forward to attending a class reunion. It will have been 23 years since I've been to Marathon. I'm sure everything is quite different from what I remember - but hey, that's part of the incentive for going!
Currently, I'm living in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. It's unbelievable out here. Not only is the weather quite balmy (by Marathon standards), the people are totally laid back and the scenery is spectacular. No, I don't work for Tourism Nova Scotia, but I'll probably stay here for the rest of my life.
Currently, I have three children: Jason (21), Sean (9) and Nichole (7), who manage to keep me on my toes. My husband, Ron, is a computer programmer and we have a home-based, communications consulting company. Although I was active in the business initially, I am now attending Acadia (in Wolfville) and working on a BSc in Microbiology. Maybe it's a mid-life crisis, but I've decided to revisit my high school dream of being a doctor (thanks Murray!). So, when I'm not chauffeuring kids to piano lessons, swimming lessons, Brownies or playdates, my life pretty much consists of all-nighters, copious amounts of coffee, lab reports, midterms, and presentations. Forty-two? I feel like a hundred and two!
School
High school was kind of a blur. Nothing really stands out except for maybe the occasional image or sound byte. Sports trips. Badminton. Frosh week. Penn Lake. Eating Oreos with Patty. School dances. Songs from the 70s and 80s. Remember Fox on the Run, Beth, Armageddon, It's Just Rockin' Roll to Me, I'm the Singer You're the Song, Queen of Hearts, More Than a Feeling, All Out of Love...? All of the stuff that makes your kids cringe! You can sometimes hear them on Oldies shows on latenight radio - if you stay up late enough.
If I had to relive my high school years (think "Peggy Sue Got Married"), once I stopped screaming, I think I'd pretty much focus on schoolwork. I regret that I didn't take school very seriously at that time, or anything else for that ...Expand for more
matter --although I suppose you have to get it out of your system at some point. Better 17 than 47.
In terms of teachers, I think we were really lucky. We had a group of people who actually seemed to care about their students: Murray in biology, Climie in French, Diane Pappas in English, Roger Hamilton in History. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, they delivered the world to us in the form of Shakespeare, Darwin, Chaucer, and Descarte. Despite our best efforts, we may have actually learned something! I sometimes wonder what they are all up to. Do they have any regrets in their choices of profession...teaching us.
College
I guess I'd be considered a professional student. I've spent more time in school than out of it and my work experiences has been interspersed between university degrees. Following high school I moved to Nova Scotia and started a science degree at Mount St. Vincent. With a baby in tow, I moved to Toronto to attend York University. I ended up switching to Mass Communications and graduated in 1993 with an Honours BA. I loved that program! So much so that I moved to New York city to complete a Masters.
Even though New York was amazing, I wasn't interested in staying there to do a PhD (it's not a child friendly city) and there weren't a lot of communications jobs available in Canada at the time so...somehow, I ended up married and living in Nova Scotia! Go figure?! Anyway, three children, two cats and a puppy later, here I am, finishing a science degree and applying for med school at 42. Maybe I should have stuck with it in the first place.
Workplace
I've had quite a few jobs since high school, from flipping burgers on the Halifax waterfront when the first wave of tall ships came in to spending brutally long hours in front of a computer screen at IBM. In between, I've freelanced for marketing companies and government agencies and have recently started a home-based business with my husband.
My medium-term goal is to work part-time in a local clinic, while my long-term goal is to work overseas with Médecins Sans Frontières.
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