"Upon graduation from Mount Holyoke College in 1955, I expected to..."

 
Hi, my name is Pam Moody Harkins. I attended Mount Holyoke from '51-'53 and I am one of the dropouts of the group. When I left Mt. Holyoke, I was disappointed in myself. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had to go back home and live with another curfew, under my father's roof. I had had two years of freedom and they were taken away from me. I did go, finally, to a secretarial school, for a year, and got a job in New York at BBDO Advertising. And then I moved to New York with a roommate and that was a wonderful thing to do. It was very nice to be free, finally, but I thought of all of my friends that were still here, and I did have regrets. It took me 39 years to go back to school and get a degree. But, in those meantime years, I did meet a husband and I did have a nice job at the advertising agency. I helped put my new husband through school, had three children. You know, just in those days, you went to college as much to get a husband as to get a career. Because this was the silent time. We were happy. Eisenhower was running the country very well. WE didn't have strife and we did what we were told. We really did not have a whole lot of external problems, and I was a good little girl and supported my husband and was as good a mother as I could be. And, 31 years after I married, we divorced happily. It's just amazing to me that I then went on to a new career, and that's when I went back to college. I was working at an investment company. And it was just wonderful. I had a whole new life. I was free again to do the things that I hadn't done 30 years before. And I guess I'm just a late bloomer. But the one continuum in life has been coming back to Mount Holyoke. The friends that we make in school are very dear to us. I don't think that the women who are here now realize that I feel as if, 52 years after I left school, I'm back again feeling the same things. I love this campus. I love what they've done. I think the improvements they've made physically are stunning. The feelings we have for each other are still here. Every time I come back for a reunion, I find new friends that I have known over the years, but hadn't really communicated with, being from this part of the country has been great. Just being part of this community has helped me be a survivor. Sharing all the stories of each other makes me feel that I am not alone, ever. I think survival is a big deal of surviving this long and now having a happy life.