It’s Never Too Late to Put Chutzpah to Work

Josephine Botello Garcia (“For Love of Learning,” Jan. 2) and I have a lot in common in spite of the fact that I’m “a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx.” In my late 40s, I was suddenly a single mother of three, teaching painting in my dining room for about $400 a month and needing to take some giant steps toward finding a career to support all of us. I had 10 college credits, a lot of life experience and, most of all, chutzpah (nerve).

I attended an orientation meeting at Antioch University Los Angeles, intending to beg my way into its bachelor’s program. By the middle of the meeting, I determined I was in the wrong room. I should be in the master’s program (there’s the chutzpah). I joined the graduate meeting, left that night with all the necessary documents, and within a few months I had demonstrated “bachelor’s equivalency” and was ensconced in the graduate program in clinical psychology, where I earned a master’s degree.

I continued to go to school, wanting to become a licensed psychologist. On my 60th birthday I was awarded my doctoral degree from the Cambridge Graduate School of Psychology. This was in spite of being told by my statistics teacher, “Harron, you don’t need a math class--you need an arithmetic class!” So go for it Josephine. Take that math class--you can do it!

HARRON KELNER

Chatsworth