Appreciate The Appreciation Elita Sohmer Clayman

There is a saying that states “What you do today, can improve all your tomorrows.” We all want to improve or change lots of things in our life.. Dr. John Levay, my first professor when I went back to get a college education in 1968, told me on a test booklet, I submitted for my first test “Mrs.Clayman, you can and will do better.” Those eight words changed my life from that February winter’s day back in 1968.

I felt the confidence he instilled in me reach the heights of my soul, brain and heart. Here was a stranger who knew me only for about eight weeks and he wrote this to me. I felt special, important and most of all delighted, that a man with his credentials, saw a purpose in my being there beyond trying to get a college education at the old age of thirty-three going on thirty-four.

My granddaughter told me that she is going to be five soon and she is in kindergarten. She said this with great pride because she knows she is going to the ‘big’ school where the big kids go including her brother who will be in the second grade. Pride in little ones like her is also in older ones like seniors too. I was not a senior then in 1968, just a proud lady who was trying to get a college education way before housewives were going back to school in those days. As I have reported before, the kids all eighteen thought me the ‘old lady‘ in the class. However, a few classes I took later on actually had an old lady of seventy-two in the class trying to get an education too. Her name was Margaret Laufer and she excelled in so many ways as an old lady student, we were all proud to have her in our midst.

She exemplified the statement what you do today can improve your tomorrows. She studied hard, got all A’s and graduated about five years later with honor and gave one of the speeches at the graduation. She even learned to drive a car at age seventy-five. Her children and grandchildren were so proud of her, as we fellow students were too.

Gloria Westbrook, a friend of mine, via the email told me she went back at age forty and got a nursing degree and she is now a head supervisor of nursing at a hospital in her hometown. She said it was hard studying at that age of forty; but she persevered because she needed an income to keep her going financially. Now days, many older people and younger people do go online and get degrees. I know of a medical assistant who is getting her masters’ degree online. It is taking her about three years and she is half way through the curriculum. She knows her income will rise and this is her future from today’s doings.

In ballroom dancing, serious students of it, yearn to earn trophies, medals or whatever rewards are given, when they compete in competitions. There are no college credits given for this, but the medals and trophies could be said, are like semester marks on an essay test. The more winnings you accrue, the more you feel secure in your understanding of the various dances and you are motivated to continue on to be placed in high levels of competition. You can start out in what is named bronze, and then comes silver and the ultimate are gold divisions. There are various divisions in each section and they all are named with valuable types of medals. There are open bronze divisions, full divisions, and divisions called open and closed. These are all danced according to the height you have reached in absorbing the dance steps and rules etc. The divisions are called American style dancing and International style. So ballroom dancing is like many and different college courses. Sometimes the studios have dance examiners come to the studio and students sign up to dance before one of these judge examiners in a special section of a dance. He or she watches you do the necessary steps with your teacher and you are rated and given a plaque stating all that. My first attempt doing that was in about 1986 and I was so nervous, that when I came home and all the dancers had participated that were scheduled to do so; I called the studio owner and nervously asked “did I pass?” He said “you not only passed, but did so with honor.” You would have thought I had won an Emmy award, or an Oscar award. I at the age then of about fifty-two years old was ecstatic.

I hung the three awards up on my kitchen walls. I had to call Verizon for the second time in two weeks because I tried to forward a picture to someone and the computer would not let me do anymore emailing. I spoke to a nice young man named Sjaro in India and in fifteen minutes, he cleared all the bad stuff away and the computer was fine again. I spoke to his supervisor to commend him and you would have thought the man was unbelievably enamored of my comments about his employee. He said to me “thank you madam for your comments, so many people complain, it is like winning an award to hear your compliments and devotion to Verizon. Thank you so much and we appreciate you appreciating us.”

Everyone wants to be appreciated and it does not matter what country you are in, where you work or what you do, appreciation is appreciated. So what you do today, can improve all your tomorrows and your tomorrows become precious.