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My name is Jo. I like to be called Ms Jo. I am a mother of 4 and a grandmother of 3. I was born Josephine Lucy Mercedes in Brooklyn New York . My mother was Jewish, but because she died when I was a toddler, I was not raised Jewish. My father came to America from Italy as a young teenager passing through Ellis Island . He was a Roman Catholic, so I was raised Catholic and attended private all girl Catholic schools. Maybe because of my Jewish heritage, the religious training I received as a Catholic didn’t make sense to me. Today, I practice neither. I consider myself spiritual but not necessarily religious.
My father was stuck in the old world thinking that educating females was a waste as they would live their lives as wives and mothers. I got mixed messages from my dad. He never had a son, so in many ways he treated me the way he would have treated his son. He taught me many things, things a father teaches a son. I was smart and I learned fast. What I soon found out was that I could only be smart when it was convenient or beneficial to him for me to be smart. If his friends were around, I had to shut off my smarts and act like his sweet, adorable, helpless, frail little girl.
But, I was smart and curious. Curious about everything, so I was an avid reader. My heroine was Madame Currie, a scientist who discovered radiation, the beginnings of modern X-rays. She was my heroine because she was smart all the time. She didn’t spend any time hiding her true self. Years later, after my children were in school, I started taking classes at the local college. I took classes mostly to satisfy my curiosity. Then one day, I found out that I had almost enough credits to graduate with a college degree. I was blown away. Me, a college graduate. I just couldn’t resist, I took the few remaining classes and graduated. I was the first person in my family to go to college. Not just the first female to earn a college degree, but the first person, male or female to earn a college degree.
I strongly recommend that you stay in school and learn as much as you can. Knowledge is your key to your future. Information, understanding and insight are all tools that will open doors for you. It’s your future. It’s the only one you’ve got. So don’t let a minute of it go to waste. Dream your dreams. Dare to make your dreams a reality. Aim for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll still find yourself among the stars..