The Ring and the Necklace
Christine Edmondson
Associate Professor, Psychology
One of my early memories as a child is sitting on my father's lap playing with his fingers. On his right hand, he wore a gold ring with a jade setting that had a diamond in the middle. He wore the ring whenever he wasn’t working. It was always a part of him when he was at home with his family. I never knew what the ring meant to him until I received my doctoral degree from Purdue University.
My father grew up poor in a “tough” Indianapolis neighborhood. His father was a plasterer. He supported his family by plastering interiors of houses and buildings, but when injuries kept my grandfather from working, they struggled financially.
My father never talked much about his tutoring when I was growing up; but, I always knew reading was important to him and he instilled that value in me.
At 4 ½ years-old, my father started kindergarten. In grade school, he read slowly, mispronounced many words and never did very well except in math and history. He developed a reputation as a problem child. His teachers did not understand that his misbehavior was due to frustration with his reading difficulties and the responses of his peers to how he sounded when he read out loud.
My father graduated from high school not knowing how to read. He was able
to graduate despite this deficit because he could remember everything he
heard in class and he was very good in math. After graduation, he apprenticed
to be a latherer. He knew it would be a good trade, but he worried because
he knew if he got hurt, he would be unable to earn a living for his family.
So, he decided he needed to learn how to read. For over two years he spent
most of his evenings at a “learning center” where an evaluation
had shown that he was smart, but had a reading problem called dyslexia. He
and his father worked many weekends lathering and plastering to pay for tutoring.
A few years later, I was born and my father decided to start his own construction
business. After several years, he was doing well. As he tells it, he bought
my mother a couple of “treats” as he became more financially
successful. One day he decided he deserved a treat too because he worked
hard and “made it.” So he bought himself the ring.
My father never talked much about his tutoring when I was growing up; but, I always knew reading was important to him and he instilled that value in me. He met with my first grade teacher to find out how she was going to teach me to read and he always told me because I was very smart I had to make straight A’s. I did get straight A’s in reading, composition, and math. When I got lower grades in handwriting and gym, my dad would tell me to work harder and improve myself. He encouraged me to try new things and to learn from my experiences. He always told me I would go to college because I was smart and because it was important to have a college degree to be financially stable.
My belief in my intelligence and my love of reading saw me through some tough times during my adolescence. I knew, if nothing else, I could earn straight A’s and use my intelligence to make the world a better place. I also knew if things were tough, there was always a good book nearby to help me to escape my troubles. The value of hard work and sense of financial responsibility my parents showed me every day led me to carry a newspaper route throughout high school. Not only did I save some of that money for college, I earned a four-year scholarship for good grades and outstanding work as a paper carrier.
Attending Indiana University was an incredible experience. Volunteering to plan and implement freshman orientation week in my dormitory showed me the importance of engaging in university life. I learned the value of science and how science can inform the way we help people with mental illness. By volunteering for an organization called the Listening Line, I learned about community mental health. In my sophomore year, I met my husband, Chris, though we didn’t get married until five years later.
After earning my bachelor’s degree, I pursued doctoral study in Clinical Psychology at Purdue University. It was emotionally challenging to learn to counsel people. Hearing their life struggles was heart-wrenching and feeling responsible for their well-being was draining. Learning to do original research in Psychology was so difficult that I came to know my weaknesses well – which led me to question my ability to do scientific research in Psychology and my ability to be a good counselor. But, I believed in my intelligence, knew how to work hard, and drew on the love and support of my husband and parents. Ultimately, persistence and perspiration led me to develop a line of research investigating anger expression in people with emotional problems. Once I had a vision for my research, I knew I had earned my Ph.D. and demonstrated the personal characteristics required for an academic career.
On August 1, 1996, I made it. I received my Ph.D. The night before, I was with my mother and father at their house. We were excited about my graduation the next day. As we talked, I noticed something funny about my father’s ring. It did not have a diamond –it had another stone. “Did I remember your ring wrong,” I asked, “or did you change it somehow?” He answered by giving me a diamond necklace. The diamond from his ring was in the necklace that was now mine. He had taken the diamond to a jeweler and had it set in a circle of smaller diamonds as a pendant. “You have your Ph.D. This means that you made it.” I wear my diamond necklace always because it keeps me close to the values my father gave to me.
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