William Penn Life, 2011 (46. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2011-03-01 / 3. szám
William Penn Fraternal Association Scholarship Foundation, Inc. m m Lisa K. Littleton Branch 129 Columbus, OH My name is Lisa (Komives) Littleton, and 1 am a former WPFASF scholarship recipient. I would like to express my appreciation for the monetary award that helped me return to college to obtain two Bachelor of Science degrees. I graduated high school and immediately entered a two-year technical school, graduating with an associate of science degree. I started working in a hospital laboratory and never looked back. I had a great job, making more money than I ever thought possible, and was promoted to a supervisory position in short order. After 11 years of supervising a laboratory department, I decided I needed to do more with my life. Not certain what I wanted to do, I listed all of the items of my current job I loved-logicalthinking, highly-detailed work, training personnel, troubleshooting, working with computers-on and on the list went. I grabbed my list and headed to the local library (this was prior to the information being readily available on the Internet), pulled a giant careerrelated book off the shelf, and started flipping through page after page. All of a sudden I came across a career that listed every single item on my list. I didn't know what it was, but I was going to get a computer science degree! I was accepted into the computer science program at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, and I applied for every scholarship and grant I could find. I started to get a funny feeling that 1 might be getting into something a bit over my head, because most of the scholarships 1 applied for were engineering-related. Wait: this is a degree from the College of Engineering? Uh-oh...Never mind...I WILL he a computer scientist...whatever that is.... Even though I was much older than the other students in my engineering classes, I found that I really enjoyed my classes and never regretted my decision for one moment. I continued to work full-time while going back to school but decided to work third shift so 1 could easily accommodate my ever-changing class schedule each quarter. I also discovered that an engineering student not only has to learn computer programming and electrical engineering, but also has to take many, many math classes. I found I enjoyed my math classes so much that I ended up getting a second degree in applied mathematics before finishing school. My husband laughs at me because I can't add simple numbers in my head, but, gosh darn it, I can calculate the trajectory of anything you put in front of me. I graduated eight years ago and have been a health care IT (computer) consultant for five years now. I live in Ohio but travel to the San Francisco Bay area each week to work at a hospital, working on computer-related projects in the laboratory. Going back to school was the most rewarding decision I ever made, even though it was five years of very hard work, long days, with little-to-no sleep. I am now a medical laboratory technician, computer scientist, and mathematician, and I am very thankful for the many doors my education has opened for me. The millions of air miles I rack up allow my husband and 1 to travel to places we never would have dreamed of. We have visited all 50 states, most of Canada and some of Mexico and sailed the Panama Canal. We will be off to the United Kingdom and Ireland in the spring for our 20th anniversary. We are very blessed. Thank you for offering students the opportunity to better themselves through education. Share Your Story We would enjoy hearing from more of our past recipients about how their WPFASF scholarship helped support their education and how their careers and lives are progressing. Please send your story and recent photograph to: John E. Lovász, William Penn Life, 709 Brighton Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15233. Or, email your submissions to: jlovasz@williaivpennassociation.org. William Penn Life 0 March 2011 0 15
