Career books

  Hello, I’m Alison Simpson. Everyone that knows me calls me “The Colorado Girl.” I’ve just arrived home post graduation from a small prestigious liberal arts college on the east coast. I’m living with my “rents.” These are my real biological married for life parents. I also have a 13-year-old brother, Alex. His friends started calling him X a couple of years ago, and it stuck. We are close buds for siblings. I missed X and my parents a ton while going through the college experience. It seems like a long journey, but I’m now finally back at home in Summit County, Colorado where I know I belong. I’m one of the 67% of college grads that apparently failed to launch properly. I wouldn’t live anywhere else right now. I don’t care if I’m the only person ever to move back home after college. I’m sincerely happy back in my family home in Summit County, Colorado. My family abode is my nest, and there is no place on earth like home. I just received my acclaimed college BA degree with a double major in business marketing as well as music. My third major was social media according to Mom and Dad. Arriving as a shy freshman and leaving a somewhat gregarious confident twenty something (millennial) reveals that college for me provided strong interactive socialization. I didn’t talk much when I was admitted but was a blabber mouth when I left. Everyone bounced social and academic matters off me. It was whether to take this professor, dump this class or boyfriend, or take this job. Everyone in time leaned on me for advice. I enjoyed the attention and came from nowhere to become a college social queen. It seems college coeds and guys were attracted to me because I was not your normal every day college gal. I was a tomboy from the Rocky Mountains. 

Now I’m truly on my way. My career path as a real twenty something couldn’t be brighter by having a very coveted job in my backyard. My parents wanted me home in the worst way. They struggled emotionally through all four of my college years. They never adapted to not having my friends and me around just to touch, feel, communicate, interact, and love. Admittedly I had the very worst case of college homesickness as a freshman. Thus, it just wasn’t right on all fronts for me to be away from my family for more than a millisecond. I did adapt and slowly became much more comfortable; but always yearned for my home, Summit County, Colorado. College was seemingly very quick in time standards. It was, however, four long years away from my rents and X. I sat in my dorm alone as a frosh wondering why I made this decision to travel so far away from home with no easy exit. I’m now forever glad I did go away to college. It made me stronger and independent, appreciate my friends and family back home even more, and made me realize I totally belong in Summit County, Colorado. I know where I’m going to live. Only God can drag me out of the Rocky Mountains now. 

  I awake to an early morning June 1948 arising sun in rural Green County, Wisconsin. It is humid (99%), hot (already 85 degrees at 0700), and I’ve listened to familiar very loud and obnoxious male cicadas all night long. My sleep was fair with the loud insect noises in the background through the evening and early morning. My Mom, Edith Zuercher, is making oatmeal downstairs.This is the very best oatmeal because it is sweet, thick, healthy and tastes better than anything on our planet. Dad, Godfrey Zuercher, is placing the final touches on his 3 piece Black suit. Dad is the President of First National Bank in Monroe, Wisconsin. He is a big shot in this little Wisconsin town of 5000 or so people. I’m now a registered nurse (RN) at the local hospital (St. Claire) on the floor from 11PM until 7AM daily. I work overtime and may get paid one and a half hourly wages if a bill passes in the state legislature. I’ve passed my Wisconsin state boards; and I’m now a free woman running the show for myself. I love returning after college and now living at home. I had last evening off from work after 3 weeks of straight nursing. 

Many of my old friends who didn’t attend college are waiting for me in my home- town. It’s been a glorious reunion “catching up” with many old friends. It does feel different; though it has been only four years since I left for Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Many other college coeds and guys who are still single have returned home to Monroe, Wisconsin also. Somehow I feel more popular now compared to high school. It could be that I went to a private Catholic school (St Victor). We had a small class and competed with the public school over every- thing (drama/debate, sports, academics). There was a bitter rivalry with occasional bitter undertones - thinking that the private religious students were spoiled and not real world. Most of these feelings evaporated with World War II and everyone’s fight for mere survival. That was one of the few good aspects of the recent war. 

My friends and parents expected me to marry someone at college; however that didn’t happen. It was not even close. I had many dates; however, the real serious guys I met returned to the war in Europe or Asia. Some interesting guys I met traveled home for a few days from Europe after VE day; and then returned to the Pacific theatre of war (it’s anything but a theatre, but that is how newspapers modernly describe this horror). Some guys and gals in the nursing corps never did return. Death was as common as the flu. Death may have been a virtue compared to the injuries I nursed back to health while a Marquette nursing student. We had innumerable amputations, brain injuries, paralysis and the psychiatric “shock trauma” syndrome of war numbering in the thousands Unfortunately, we’ve become insulated from our true feelings, and have stubbornly accepted this phenomenon of war. Thankfully, VE and VJ day have occurred, I’ve finished college and I’m home. I gave serious thought to the military nursing corps; however Dad’s Europe bunker stories from World War I made myself selfish fearing lifelong injury or death. I helped on the home front immensely.