Green's encouragement to apply helped boost Robinson over the last of many hurdles between her and a diploma. At eighteen, she was too busy helping her mother raise her siblings to consider college. She took several courses over the next twenty-seven years, although rearing two kids in a dangerous inner city Boston neighborhood, coping with a drug-addicted husband, and supporting the family didn't leave much time for study. Today, Robinson is one of 152 nontraditional age students--the Frances Perkins Scholars-- finishing their degrees at Mount Holyoke. The complex life stories of most "FPs" prove that, although a straight line is the fastest way between two points, it's not the only way to reach a goal. Most FPs' life patterns resemble meandering streams shaped by nature and chance as well as personal will. The circumstances leading women to the FP program are individual, but the reason is the same: every woman knows when it's her turn to shine. Here are some of their stories. Hazel Robinson raised two children mostly on her own, handled a formerly drug-addicted husband, moved her family out of a dangerous inner-city neighborhood, and even commuted more than two hours each way to a job while always pursuing a college degree. Finally, she's going to get one.		Edna Brown '94 didn't consider college at age eighteen because no one told her why she should. "None of my family, friends, or neighbors knew about college and even the high school counselors didn't encourage us to apply," recalls the forty-eight-year-old Brown, who reasoned that a full-time income was preferable to paying for college. But after her son Vance was born Brown found her bank clerk's salary couldn't support them both. Public assistance paid the bills, and also provided child care and tuition assistance, so Brown could polish her secretarial skills at New York's Rockland Community College. This new start reawakened her desire to become a teacher, and Brown began taking liberal arts courses at Rockland. She learned about the FP program from her adviser, Ruth Cowan '51. "Before MHC I didn't have goals," she says. "I just saw myself going to work and coming home, with no higher aspirations. MHC taught me not to settle for what I'm doing right now but to look for what more can be done and then to achieve it." The first in her family to attend college, Brown is now at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor earning a master's in social work and a PhD in developmental psychology. "I've learned to be assertive, to open a door if it doesn't open on its own," she says.
Always eager to work with her hands, Brenda Biddle supported herself as a chef for ten years before discovering deeper meanings of food and hunger through intellectual study. Jennifer Lowe '95 dropped out of two colleges before applying to MHC. "I vacillated between being an astrophysicist, a ballet dancer, a cowgirl, and a zookeeper; in short, I had no realistic idea of my own abilities or proclivities," she admits. "I always wanted to return to the academy, but I wanted to know precisely why." The answer came during a reading by Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky at the bookstore where she worked. Lowe knew she wanted to be a poet too and "add to that body of creative knowledge." She won a fistful of poetry and academic awards at MHC and went to study for a master's degree in English literature at the University of Cambridge. She describes her MHC metamorphosis in typically poetic fashion: "I have learned to respect the shadow; I know more about the powerful cultures that have created me; I am over $35,000 in debt; I am pushing thirty, my gums are receding, and I am almost completely sedentary; I have many more interesting friends and much more interesting conversations; I vote quite differently; I laugh a lot more; and I never have to work in a restaurant or bookstore again unless I want to."		Brenda Biddle quit Hampshire College in the 1970s and worked on an archaeological dig in England, picked grapes in France, studied in Italy, lived in a teepee while running a health food store, got married and divorced, and supported herself doing everything from wiring computer chips to quilting. Most recently, Biddle trained herself as a gourmet cook and ran Vermont's Brick House Supper Club, offering diners five-course meals featuring dishes like roasted duck breast with fig-and-ginger chutney. Although she still cooks professionally, Biddle discovered at MHC a deeper way to make food a part of her life. Now forty-five, she is studying "food as a force in history, as a metaphor in literature, and from an anthropological perspective" and finds the study "has created a new sense of possibilities and horizons." Biddle plans to do graduate work and envisions a future of traveling, writing, and studying the cultural meanings of food. "Before MHC, I was deciding what to cook my three kids for dinner," she says. "Now I look at what people ate in the Middle Ages, what it was like to be in a famine, and examine deeper food-related issues instead of the day-to-day drudgery of satisfying my family's hunger." Artist Julia Ferrari, now forty-three, quit college in 1974 to start a business illustrating, hand-setting, and printing limited edition fine print books. She was so successful that three books she typeset and printed are now in the permanent collection at New York's Museum of Modern Art. But Ferrari's personal artistry took a back seat to the business until she arrived on campus. Here, Ferrari finally had time for her own work in oils and mixed media, and she got an academic foundation in art history. Ferrari found that these courses inspired her artistically and taught her "how to identify goals and move step-by-step toward their final achievement." Her latest project is collaborating with her partner, Dan, on a hand-printed book for which she has made etchings and will design the typography and binding. "After successfully completing my work at Mount Holyoke [in December 1996], I feel that I can accomplish anything I work hard at," says Ferrari.
Erika Dyson always thought she should go to college, but working seventy hours weekly as a theatrical costumer didn't leave time. Eventually, she says, "There was too much of myself that I had to put aside for theater. I realized I had to do something new so the part of me that wasn't growing could catch up to the part that had already grown so much."		Twenty-nine-year-old Erika Dyson spent years building a career as a theatrical costumer. But just as it was finally soaring--bringing her steady work in the U.S. and abroad--she burned out. After one vacation, Dyson broke down crying at the prospect of returning to her high-stress job. "The part of my brain that likes to learn was shut off, and I realized I needed the educational equivalent of crop rotation to keep growing," she says. At that moment she knew she needed to go back to college, even if she wasn't sure what to study. Originally planning a religion major, Dyson is now designing her own major involving nonfiction narrative writing about women's lives. She calls MHC "a crash course in who you are," and revels in studying subjects as disparate as quantitative reasoning, printmaking, and Japanese. "It's a luxury to devote yourself to seeing what you're capable of," she says.
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 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!' "		There are 152 Frances Perkins scholars from sixteen states, Puerto Rico, and five other countries. In the last five years, nearly three-quarters of FPs graduated with at least one academic honor. FPs are majoring in thirty academic areas, from neuroscience to medieval studies. About half take a full-time course load; half study part time. One-third live on campus in student residence halls. FP director Kay Althoff '84 and associate director Carolyn Dietel say that each year it gets harder to select applicants because so many are fascinating and accomplished. But Althoff notes, "Every year we say, 'This is the best group yet!' "
"I don't want a career where I can make lots of money, as I've already done that," says Jermar Inman. "I want to make a positive difference in the world." The international relations major has already begun by volunteering for Habitat for Humanity in what's laughingly called her spare time.		Jermar Inman started art college right after high school but found "it didn't look as good as the man in my life. I dropped out after one semester." Inman got married, had five children, and built a multimillion-dollar national construction business with her husband. Unfortunately, the relationship deteriorated as the business thrived. Divorce took Inman "from affluence--having cars, diamonds, and a big house--to having nothing and nobody." She tried real estate and worked as a travel agent, used her pilot's license, began a new relationship, and started a cleaning business. "You can make good money, but I felt I had more to give than cleaning someone else's toilet," Inman says. After surprising herself academically at a junior college, Inman moved from Florida to MHC at age forty-five and is training for an international relations career. "Sometimes I feel intimidated in class because the women are so brilliant, but other times things come out of my mouth and I think, 'Wow! I said that!'"
... And what about Hazel Robinson, who learned about MHC at the hairdresser? She's living in Amherst with her husband (who's kicked drugs and helps others do the same) and two children, and majoring in sociology. The Robinsons are laying the groundwork for Northampton's first residential substance abuse treatment program for women. As Robinson's and other FPs' lives make clear, every woman is a universe of possibilities, and the FP program helps their stars shine brightly. -- BY EMILY HARRISON WEIR