Profiles in Success
by Laura Conley
My first impression of Reanetta Livingston Taylor was one of intensity fueled by frustration. We met on a January evening in 1999. I had been a full-time adviser for all of three weeks. Reanetta walked in,sat down and glared at me. She hated her situation. She was a business major, but was not enjoying it. The coursework was not interesting to her, and math was a horrible struggle, but her Fortune 500 company would only pay for business-related classes. She felt trapped. Reanetta had accumulated so many hours she didn’t believe she could change majors and, even if she could, what field could she enter that her employer would cover? After listening to her plight, I introduced her to the School of Communication and its Business/ Organizational Communication specialty.
The School of Communication has a broad ability to absorb substantial numbers of credits from other disciplines to meet its graduation requirements. We reviewed the math sequence she would need and the options for classes. I also mentioned academic reassessment, which is a tool that could help raise her GPA which had suffered due to her lack of interest in her field of study. By the end of the hour she actually smiled! I urged her to contact the human resources department at work to see if the company would pay for communication classes.
Several weeks later she stopped in again. HR had OK’d the switch! One hurdle cleared, now we had to work on math. Since the requirement for communication was completely different from business, we decided on two things. She would take math all by itself to give her the best chance for success, and she would drive to the Wayne Campus to complete it, taking advantage of the smaller classes offered there. Basic Statistics was completed in a fall semester, also all by itself. From that point on there was no stopping her. Reanetta graduated in December 2004 with a BA in Business/Organizational Communication and a minor in Business Administration for Non Majors. Her grades were excellent. She was happy and ready to tackle the world…until she got notification two weeks after graduation that she was being offered “retirement” from her long standing employer.
She went from the top of the mountain to the deep dark valley of unemployment, uncertainty and the loss of identity common among people who relate strongly to their world of work. She knew she had a loving family, a husband who adored her, three children and several grandchildren who loved her. But, uncertainty about her future weighed heavily. She tried filling the void with volunteer work and did a lot of thinking and talking things over with her husband and family. She decided to take a risk and chose more school rather than immediate employment.
She began her first graduate course in Communication during the summer of 2005 and spent three weeks in London with the PR-London class that Dr. David Ritchey takes abroad each summer. Upon her return, she was granted a teaching assistantship which covered the cost of her master's degree in return for her teaching several general education speech classes each semester as she pursued her degree. She found her calling!!
Reanetta graduated in December of 2006 with her Master of Arts in Communication. Since then, she has been teaching on campus as a part-time faculty member and has truly found the job she’s been looking for her whole life. She’s happy, busy and doing what she loves. Reanetta truly is a profile of success.