Eileen Drumm

A Second Chance to Shine - The Before and After Lives of Mount Holyoke's Older Learners
Vista, Summer 1997, by Emily Harrison Weir

Security Lost and Found

Eileen Drumm left community college in the 1970s, moved cross-country twice, and settled into a job at Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. "I thought I would be happy with a steady job and a nest egg for the future," she recalls. Drumm hadn't cared much for high school and took her first college course--psychology--to learn to help when friends told her their problems. To her surprise, she was fascinated Eileen Drumm and continued at Springfield Technical Community College while working two jobs.

"Mount Holyoke taught me to see something through to completion. Before, I always stopped short because I was terrified I'd fail," she says. There's no stopping the thirty-eight-year-old religion major now; the woman who once assumed that a course must be easy if she could conquer it now aims for a master of divinity degree. "I never dreamed I could be so vital a human being or that I'd be a straight-A student," Drumm marvels. "I gave up financial security to come here, and in doing so found out what's really important in life. This environment encourages women to say, 'Yes, I can!' "