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Jacque Pruitt knows where you’re coming from. She gets it.
She applied to Ivy Tech four times before finally following through. “I had all the paperwork done, but I’d get cold feet,” she remembers. “The admissions staff got to know me well. I just didn’t believe I could do the work. I was afraid to even try.”
If you live around Columbus, you might remember Jacque from a front page newspaper photo of a lasik surgery performed by a team at Jacque’s employer, the Pankratz Eye Institute. Jacque’s the masked surgical technician in the photo.
She was a 16-year-old Candy Striper when she realized she wanted to be in the health care industry. After high school, she got a job as a hospital aide. Watching the surgical technicians, she thought, I want to do that.
And Ivy Tech had the programs.
Sounds simple – but people are complicated.
Jacque grew up in surroundings that had little use for her dreams. “As a child I was told I would never amount to anything. When you grow up, you still believe it.”
But with encouragement from her husband and a now-familiar Ivy Tech staff, the fourth time was the charm. She enrolled. She went to her first class.
“I was just blown away by the help I got from instructors and staff, like Susan Sheets. I mean, Ivy Tech is great for the younger generation, but for older people like me who want to still make something of ourselves and aren’t sure whether we can succeed, Ivy Tech is the place to be. They kept telling me, you can do his, you’re capable. Study and set your mind on your goal.”
Jacque discovered that many Ivy Tech students, like her, were older, working, and raising kids while going to school.
She was also amazed by the experience she got. “During my clinicals, I was interested in neurology. I got to help (with instructors present) during craniotomies. I thought, this is so cool – and I’m only a student!”
Later more attracted to eye surgery, she applied for a job at Pankratz. “They hired me right after graduation,” she says.
Speaking of her 2005 graduation, “you should have seen me. I was so emotional I could hardly stand,” she says. Her husband and now-grown children couldn’t have been prouder. Later, Jacque went up to one of the once-critical relatives. “I told them I did amount to something. It took me 20 years but I did it, and I’m holding my head up high!”
For someone once terrified at the thought of college, Jacque’s acquired quite a taste for it. “I’m thinking about going back and becoming a nurse,” she said. “I really miss the learning experience at Ivy Tech.”
In the meantime, she has another calling.
It began with an actual call from a woman about Jacque’s age (40s) who is apparently interested in the surgical tech program. That’s the first reason she was referred to Jacque. The second is that she has a problem Jacque understands: fear.
“She’s one of those people who dropped through the cracks, “Jacque says. ”She wants to go back to school and better her life, but she’s terrified to even try. She sounded like me all over again.”
Jacque remembers Susan Sheets and all the Ivy Tech people who believed in her when she struggled. “I couldn’t stand missing a question on a test; I was afraid to fail, afraid to let my husband and kids down. Susan assured me it was okay to miss a question, that I could still learn.
“How great would it be if I could mentor someone like I was mentored? I’ve been in that woman’s shoes. It would mean so much to help someone like that,” she says.
Jacque is living proof that fear does not have to rule your life.
“I got my degree. I wish everyone could take that opportunity. There are so many people out there who don’t realize they can succeed, but they have to get started, and they have to stop letting fear rule them.”