Nicole Witmer

Alan Schulze: This is Alan Schulze interviewing Nicole Witmer on March 25^th, 2015, it’s roughly around noonish and we’re at the Cumberland County Historical Society. So, you give consent to be interviewed and for all this to be logged in the Cumberland County Historical Society archives?

Nicole Witmer: Yes.

AS: Ok, so, to start things off here how long have you lived in Cumberland County.

NW: All my life, it’ll be 25 years next month.

AS: Ok, and um, where in the County are you from?

NW: Uh, I’m from about half way between um, Carlisle and Newville along route 11.

AS: Ok, and what did you’re parents do for a living?

NW: Uh, they are farmers, uh, my dad came from a primarily farming background uh, in Carlisle. My mom was from Boiling Springs. She was from a little urban area, she married my dad and she got uh, into farming that way.

AS: Ok, so you grew up on a farm then.

NW: A beef farm yes.

AS: A beef farm. Ok could you talk a little about your experiences growing up on a farm?

NW: Uh, sure. Um. I’ll say it’s a lot of fun but it’s also a lot of work. Um, as a farmer you don’t have any, really any vacation time, you don’t have sick days, you don’t have holidays. If you have live animals they have to be fed and watered and taken care of. Uh, and usually the summer months are our busiest. Um, I remember even when I was a little kid I would always go along and helped dad with anything that he needed whether it would be um, rolling a hay bale to a certain spot, because they were too heavy for me to really lift. Um, and we ah, we did a lot of other silly things too. Like chase rabbits, we had chickens to take care of, so it was a lot of work but it was a lot of fun growing up on a beef farm.

AS: You said you guys had hay bales so did you grow crops also?

NW: Yes. We have roughly a hundred and fourteen acres, uh half of that it pasture. So, the cows can eat in certain sections at a time. Um, but we also grow, um, alfalfa and orchard grass, and right now we also grow uh, corn.

AS: Ok the corn is for sale I assume?

NW: Yes

AS: Or do you use that for animals?

NW: We do not use the corn, no. We use the hay that we grow to feed our own cattle, but the corn is sold other places.

AS: Because that’s more or less a cash crop, for lack of a better term.

NW: That’s a cash crop, for now.

AS: Ok.

NW: That’ll change.

AS: Have you grown anything else there throughout your life?

NW: Um, we didn’t used to grow corn, but in recent years that’s become more profitable, so we’ve uh, dedicated two of the fields to corn. Um, the only thing that we really grew in big swaths was uh, hay, just orchard grass mixed with alfalfa.

AS: Ok, no soybean or anything like that?

NW: Maybe, maybe we will in the future but right now it doesn’t look like it.

AS: OK, ok so what was your childhood like, what school district did you go to?

NW: The school district I was in was um, Big Spring, um but at the time it was pretty horrible curriculum, you weren’t really taught a lot, it was just, terrible, um.

AS: What time was this around?

NW: 1996

AS: Ok.

NW: And I went to Kindergarten in Plainfield Elementary, which is now not a school it’s condemned, it’s not really usable anymore. Um, I went to kindergarten and first grade there. Uh my mom pulled me out, uh, and home schooled me the rest of my first grade year, first grade semester, home schooled me, finished it up, then put me into another school called Grace Baptist Elementary school I believe it was. Um, and I went to second grade there. Um, but that school was a little too rigid, so, they thought well you know, that’s not a good fit either so they pulled me out and I was home schooled from third grade to um, tenth grade.

AS: You you’ve got experiences in public school, private school and home school.

NW: Yes, and cyber school.

AS: And cyber school?

NW: That was when I uh, in eleventh grade they applied me for cyber school, because if uh, somehow if you agreed to do cyber school they would allow you to work on I think college credits um, at the same time, um by that point I had completed, by the end of eleventh grade I had completed all my high school things I had to finish up and I was able to skip twelfth grade.

AS: Was this the state sponsored cyber school?

 NW: Yea that was PA Cyber.

AS: Ok, that had just started up in the late 2000s right?

NW: Yes, and we got on board that band wagon

AS: Oh, were you like one of the first people through that or did you wait a few years to see how it went first?

NW: That I don’t know, when did it start?

AS: I think around 2006 or so.

NW: Uh, then that would have been, maybe a year after. Cause I graduated in 08.

AS: Ok.

NW: So it would have been around 07 when we were going through PA Cyber.

AS: Ok, so which of those did you like the most? Uh, public, private, cyber or home school?

NW: It’s, uh, I really didn’t like public school, not, just because you know, I really, I remember, this was like kindergarten so I was like six years old, um, I remember getting beat up a lot just because I was the wimpy kid, I was the shortest skinniest one. Um, and I remember a lot of times the whole class would get in trouble for one thing that one kid would say, and my Teacher at the time uh Mrs. Lewis, she was a bear of a woman, like I was really scared of her and, she had tenure of course so she could basically treat kids however she wanted and not get reprimanded for it. So that was one of the problems I saw at public school, um I was really too young to complain about the school work or anything, like I just didn’t know that I wasn’t learning anything, I was just there to have fun. Um, I like uh, I like the idea of home schooling just because you’re able to be more flexible, you’re able to focus on your weaknesses and get better at them, um it’s a lot more flexible, however parents who want to home school their kids, they need to be very careful that they spend even extra time getting their kid involved and out in the world with other kids their age, and socializing them, that’s vital to thriving in the real world. Um, so for home schooling my mom, she signed us up for classes at the YMC A, she signed us up for the history camp here at Cumberland County Historical Society. Anything she could do extra to get us out with kids our own age and make sure we weren’t socially backward or anything that’s, that was, that’s kind of something you have to put more effort into when you’re home schooling. Uh, and cyber school I guess it was ok. I mean it was kind of annoying, you know to talk to your professor you’d have to get on headphones and a mic and communicate with your class via computer. That I just kind of found annoying, and tedious, and connections were lost, and someone’s internet wasn’t good and that could be disruptive to the lesson too. So I guess to answer your question, I liked home schooling the most.

AS: Ok, and about the home schooling you said that you still had an active social life despite the fact of not going to a public school, you still got to see people your own age?

NW: Yea,

AS: Ok

NW: One of the rules with home schooling was with um, school started at 8, my mom made sure that we were up, uh, pjs were not allowed you still had to get dressed, just like a regular day at school um, we had recess you know, we’d go and play in the yard or something, but to socialize, yes we made sure that we were active any way that we could be with kids our own age.

AS: Ok was it all did you feel it was a all, different at all from what you experienced by usual kids and uh, who went to high school in the public realm or um, was it more or less the same thing just without the school meeting place component?

NW: It was different. Um, with home schooling I guess it is different. With public school, I think, with public school you’re mixed with kids whose parents might not really give a damn so, so the can’t, am I allowed to swear?

AS: (laughs) Yea I think you’re good

NW: They might not care, the parents might not care, they really won’t discipline their child and they’ll say you know, you’re child might be a hoodlum and anything, so send them off to public school, mix in with the rest of the kids and uh, so public school. I don’t know you’re around a lot of really different people, and that’s good, but.

AS: So basically you were around um, basically you socialized with a different group of uh, other kids than you would have had you gone to public school, basically, right?

NW: Yes.

AS: Ok, that makes sense. Um, and when you graduated, actually nah I’ll get to that part later. Is there any particular things that you remember uh, about growing up on a farm like things that you’re parents went through and all that stuff like uh, obviously there was the stock market, it crashed in 2008 or other things that happened throughout the 90s-

NW: Yea, the bubble

AS: like, or was-

NW: The housing bubble.

AS: Here’s one, were there any like droughts or anything that really affected your family’s livelihood or anything, anything that happened on the farm like that?

NW: Not that really affected us, I remember one year there was a drought, I think it was 05 or something um, and we just figured well if it gets too bad we’re just gonna have to dig a bigger well. Cause I water just comes from an individual well uh, because we had cows to water and they can drink quite a few gallons of water every single day and our well was running dry but I don’t know we never did drill a bigger well because you know eventually it just passed we were able to just get by so there was no need to invest in drilling a bigger well.

AS: You didn’t have to worry about crops dying or anything like that?

NW: Well our farm’s not the big commercial farm that you might see out west. Where they have the irrigation and everything um, we don’t water our crops at all by ourselves, we just let the rain do its work.

AS: Ok so if you have a bad season, oh well, right?

NW: It would be bad if we had a bad season but because this is central Pennsylvania, I don’t remember a drought or any of the weather really interfering with our cash crops. Now the one way that weather could affect our livelihood is like god forbid a tornado would come through, you know kill a few cows um-

AS: Has that ever happened? Have there been any tornados in the area in you lifetime, or anything like that?

 NW: Yes. There was one, um, the tornado, I was told by a neighbor who saw it, I didn’t see it I was in the house, ducking for cover. He said that the tornado touched down between the barn and our house, and it knocked over a few of our trees, which, you know they were pretty big, tall trees at the time. Ah we never saw, all we could see out our window was gray and really loud howling sounds.

AS: Do you know what year this would have been? Or how old you would have been at the time?

NW: 04

AS: 04?

NW: 04 or 05. Ah the tornado itself didn’t really affect us, we had a few tree limbs on fences which was more work for us. The tornado didn’t affect us but the lightning that came with it, it struck one of our trees in the field next to our house, also along the Ritner Highway, lightning struck one of our trees and our goats, our herd of goats that was standing under the tree they got electrocuted and I think it was maybe five or six of them were dead so.

AS: I’ve heard that happens with livestock, they hide under trees, they get struck by lightning and it takes them out in masse.

NW: That was the year, yea that had to be 04 or 05, that was the year when we were experimenting with another kind of animal um boar goats, for meat. They were dad’s little investment, little experiment, ah he bred them, and in the spring had little baby goats which was just fine with me, me and my brother and sister would play with them. Ah but that was, that was bad, we lost, we didn’t really lose many, but it was a bad investment because of what happened to them.

AS: Cause they were the ones that got struck by lightning.  

NW: Yea.

AS: Ah.

NW: It was bad for them too (laughs). That was one example that I can remember of the weather really affecting us.

AS: Sounds like you guys were really lucky. Sound like the tornado just barely missed you.

NW: Yea and our trees they’ve been growing for hundreds of years they’re really tall, they’re taller, when they were still standing, most of them were taller than the barn, so if they would have tipped over and hit our house, that would have been horrible, or the tornado, that would have been really bad.

AS: Between getting hit with a tree or a tornado, it think the tree is the lesser of the two evils there.

NW: Yea (laughs)    

AS: Alright now one thing I’ve noticed about the area since I’ve moved here is that there, as time goes on there’s less and less farms and more and more warehouses growing up along the I-81 corridor

NW: Yes, yes

AS: Has that done anything, to your family like I imagine that’s been affecting property values and ah, or has it affected your family’s business in any way? Or also like what’s your opinion on that, this transition they’re going through

NW: It hasn’t, the warehouses popping up around us haven’t exactly affected us um property value, I would assume it’s not gonna go extremely uh low, cause there’s always less and less land.

AS: Um hmm.

NW: Ah, my opinion on it is, it’s good that we’re growing and it’s good that you know, business is coming here. Ah, but it’s a little disheartening because farms are becoming more and more a thing of the past. Now you have more ah, you have less farms but bigger farms that aren’t run and operated by families. Um, the warehouses, besides being you know a sore spot, to look at, they haven’t really affected ah, us.

AS: Ok withah, these other farms getting bought up and developed, does that mean like less competition for you family or anything like that or does it-

NW: No.  

AS: It doesn’t really affect you at all?

NW: It doesn’t really affect us, ah we sell our beef to private individuals just, ee, There’s always someone to buy beef and it’s actually sad for us because we like to see the tradition of farming continue and with other farms disappearing and being converted into warehouses, well that land can never be used again for agriculture. So, you know, to be independent is to be able to feed yourself to know how to grow stuff, to know how to cook your own food um, so it would be sad if we would lose that.

AS: Has your family known anybody whose sold out and  had their farms developed? Maybe sold out’s not the best term there but you know what I mean.

NW: Yea.

AS: Sold their land.

NW: We have known older couples who had to sell their farm in order to move to like a small ranch house because they just couldn’t keep up with it because of their old age, but they usually sold them to ah Amish.

AS: Hmm

NW: They didn’t really sell them to um

AS: They didn’t sell them to developers?

NW: No. Nobody that we knew.

AS: Hmm

NW: But where ah, do you know where along 81 that Kohl’s and ah

AS: Yes, yes

NW: Shopping center

AS: Off of ah York Road.

NW: Yea. Well, back in the day that used to just be all hills and pasture and there was a little hill in the center of it with ah, a farm house ah and a barn on it, and that got paved over and they put a shopping mall there.

AS: They actually razed the farm house there to put that in?

NW: Raised the farm house? No the completely demolished the farm house.

AS: Well that’s what razed means.

NW: Oh.

AS: (Laughs)

NW: I thought raised like raise up.

AS: It has a Z in it

NW: Oh razed.

AS: Yea.

NW: Nope

AS: Ok so they actually took down the entire farm then they didn’t just develop the land.

NW: They just mowed over it.

AS: Ah ok. Was that like an older, was that like an example of an older couple selling out or….I need to stop saying selling out.

NW: Well we didn’t, we didn’t, we didn’t know who owned the land.

AS: You didn’t know that one?

NW: We didn’t know a lot ah, one Amish farm along Walnut Bottom Road, they sold their farm to a developer. It’s now, where their house used to be and the barn it’s just completely gone and a warehouse sits a little off the road.

AS: Ok

NW: But we didn’t know them personally, we just knew they were Amish and we knew that they couldn’t keep up with the farm.

AS: Ok, all right. Were you guys affected at all by when the stock market crashed in 08? That would have been right about when you were graduating high school right?

NW: 08 I would have been at, when did I start up at Shippensburg, I would have been ah, going to HACC classes at the time, and that’s also the same time that I graduated. The stock market um, I did not affect our finances because, you know being German, being Pennsylvania Dutch ah farmers, we were always very frugal, my dad he, not really a penny pincher we would say, I mean me and my sister never really thought we were doing without, but he did teach us the difference between wants, and needs, and he had always saved since me and my siblings were born, dad’s been putting money away in the bank, little by little ah so that we could afford to both start college around the same time and then ah, my brother whose six years younger, he was able to start college up at Shippensburg too. Ah, and my dad, he invests in a few stocks and he kinda saw what was going to happen with the um, ah the housing bubble ah and you know he even told me he’s like “history is repeating itself, they’re buying with money they don’t even have and it’s all going to come crashing down” so, the Recession of 08, I guess we can still see the effects of it even today, ah but it really had no effect on us because we didn’t buy with credit.

AS: So as business owners you guys were really unaffected by it, more or less.

NW: As smart business owners, you’re right we were not affected by it.

AS: Well, once again you guys are very lucky there. A lot of, back where I’m from a lot of farmers lost their property when the, everything blew up there so. Good move.

(Both Laugh)

AS: And you mentioned this was about this time you started going to classes at HACC. How was your college experience, how was like, you’re currently a student, graduate student at Shippensburg right?

NW: Yes.

AS: How did you come to be there? How did that work?

NW: Well, HACC stands for Harrisburg Area Community College, I started doing credits there because I don’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I didn’t know where I wanted to go, or what my major was going to be. Um, and HACC, you could take classes there at ah, you know they were a lot less expensive than at a regular university, ah so I could work on my electives, through HACC and they could transfer. Well, they would, they said most of them would ah transfer to any school. Ah so, Shippensburg, I picked Shippensburg because it was twenty minutes from my house, straight shot up route 11, ah I could live at home, save money instead of paying to live there um.  I don’t know, with HACC classes because they are you know, disorganized and you can take them any way you really want to ah it was hard making friends with any of the HACC classes, with any of my classmates there because you know, once the class was over you’d pack up get in your car and leave again like there was, it was hard to really hang out with any of your classmates at HACC so.     

AS: So there was no real like campus community there or anything like that?

NW: Not really, but that’s only because it would be hard, unless you went to a HACC campus, like the one up in Gettysburg, I was going to that campus for one semester, just because that’s how it worked out, um, but even then it’s, it is hard.

AS: Ok, how long were you there before you transferred to Shippensburg?

NW: About a year, I started at Shippensburg in 09.

AS: Ok, and what were you studying when you went there?

NW: I was undeclared, I was undeclared both at HACC and then, both at Shippensburg, and I was kind of dragging my feet, dragging my feet about finding a major, and I finally picked um, I picked ah history for my major because, I don’t know, history just seemed really fun to me and my parents had already said that no matter what you pick, no matter what major you pick you also have to get your teaching certificate.

AS: Mm Hmm ok, Um, you didn’t stick with that though did you.

NW: No.

AS: No.

NW: I found out very quickly that I did not want to be a teacher in the traditional sense, maybe like to be an educator somewhere, at a museum, that would be really cool but I really would not enjoy being a teacher at a public school, there’s no way. Too much other stuff you have to deal with.

AS: So it wasn’t just the fact of being a teacher was more like the system and that that drove you out of it?

NW: Yea cause you would come back and you’d basically have to do, you’d be the same, it would be the same thing that I left school to be. There was no individuality, there’s no creativity really.

AS: So your experiences with um, going through all the different kinds of schools public, private, charter, and home school kind of left a distaste for the education system that you were being taught to perpetuate and that’s why you stepped away from it?

NW: Yea, that’s a very good way to put it but yes.

AS: Ok, just making sure I understood that.

NW: That’s completely right.

AS: Ok Um, did you think, did you ever find there was more of a say uh, you said at HACC there wasn’t much of a campus community or anything. Did you experience more of that at Shippensburg?

NW: Yes.

AS: Ok so, elaborate on that a little bit.

NW: Uhh, with Shippensburg because you were actually on a physical campus, and there was other things to do on campus, they had ah, clubs. I joined the German club, only because one of the girls that was in my class she kinda uh, she told me “hey this is a really fun group and we eat all the German food and we do this stuff and do other kinds of things” and it did sound fun. So I met a lot of people through ah, the German club. Um, I joined the ah, College Republicans. I found it very odd, you know growing up home schooling I thought oh I’m going to go to a campus there’s gonna be a lot of people who you know, are gonna see the opposite side of my political views, I’m probably not going to find anyone to talk to, but that wasn’t the case, I had a lot of people, some actually did have some things in common with me and I really ah, liked it. And with classes and everything, like there’s time, like you’re sitting outside of class, you know waiting for the doors to unlock ah, and that’s time that is also I find you make more friends that way too.

AS: Ok. And you don’t feel like you missed out on anything from not living on campus or anything like that?

NW: Um, I probably missed out on a few things but they weren’t really my goals to participate in anyway. Such as too much drinking, too much drinking and driving probably drugs.

AS: Stuff you weren’t interested in.

NW: Yea, so I don’t really feel like left out of that. I mean I find it quite humorous when my friends tell me stories about that stuff. I mean I laugh so hard about the stuff like that, the crazy stuff that they got into. Ah, but I just, I was too busy, I was working at the Bosler Library, yea so this is 2009 so I was working at the Bosler Library part time, I had just other stuff to do. I wanted to keep up with my studies, I wanted to do really good and prove to everyone I was the smart homeschooler, so I just, I don’t know I was just busy with other things.

AS: That’s understandable, um, I had something else there. Oh yea, did you ever spend much time in Shippensburg before you went there for school, like did your family ever go down there for anything?

NW: That was a place to like drive through. Ah, I know a lot of times even as a kid we’d go to ah, Cedar Grove. The ah, it’s on route 11, it’s right before you get into the town of Shippensburg. Ah it’s an Amish run auction, and we would take-

AS: I think I’ve seen that.

NW: Yea, they have a big sign out on it, and um, Dad would always load up his hay wagons and hitch it to the truck and drive down there. And others would bid on hay and he’d sell hay, and he’d buy straw from other vendors from the area.

AS: Since you guys didn’t grow straw.

NW: No we didn’t.

AS: Ok.

NW: Straw is a very dusty, dirty endeavor, um-

AS: It’s basically wheat right?

NW: Mmmmmmm kinda.

AS: Straw is the leftover after you harvest wheat right?

NW: No.

AS: Oh ok.

NW: It’s just-

AS: That shows you how much of a farmer I am.

NW: You plant, it’s straw, and his brother up in Newburg, yea his brother in Newburg, my Uncle Dave, he always planted straw and bale his own. So we would buy and trade stuff with my Uncle Dave to get straw. So you know what straw is for really.

AS: Yea, it’s like bedding.

NW: Yea, that’s the bedding. Hay is the stuff that you eat, that cows eat and then straw is uh, what they lay on.

AS: Just the bedding and all that. Ok um, so what was some of like your impressions of Shippensburg when started spending more time there? Not just the college but the town and all that.

NW: I thought “oh my gosh there’s so many Amish people here.”

AS: Really?

NW: There’s so many buggies on the road, um.

AS: So there’s more of them than what you would see up closer to Carlisle?

NW: Yea. Every once in a great while we’d see a horse and buggy go by our house, which is like a few miles away from the center of Carlisle. Ah but once you get closer to Shippensburg, then there’s more hose and buggies on the road, more activity, more ah, Amish people on bikes. So it does get busier once you get closer to Shippensburg.

AS: So if anything that means Shippensburg is even more rural that where you’re from. If I’m reading that right.

NW: More, yea, yea, a little more rural.

AS: Not what I was expecting, considering it’s a college town and all.

NW: It is but Amish were there even before the college. And they just never decided to move because it’s great farmland, there’s a lot of limestone and the soil’s good and I guess they didn’t see a reason to leave.

AS: Ok, all right. Um, about, back to the college, there’s a lot of um, redevelopment going on there right now, particularly with the dorms and all, and that all started after you got there.

NW: Yes.

AS: What’s your experience been with that cause, you know the college is going through a major change right now.

NW: Well I’m a little miffed because the new dorms, so they’re taking the money that students like me give them, and they’re buying something brand new, building it from the ground up, tearing down the old stuff. Um, I really do see it as a waste of money because they’re also charging students more for these brand new dorms. Which that’s not gonna, you know from a business standpoint you don’t charge more for the same service and expect more people to buy it. You know, it’s a university they have to keep you know technology up to date and everything, but I see stuff that I would consider wasteful spending.

AS: So you don’t think they’re making good, sustainable steps towards the future there with that, with those?

NW: No.

AS: Hmm.

NW: I think that was a poor decision on the college’s part.

AS: Ok, all right. Well now you’re in grad school now you mentioned.

NW: Yes.

AS: What made you decide to go on to a advanced degree beyond your bachelor’s.

NW: Well-

AS: Cause you just, there’s a pattern with you, you just keep going up the school ladder hitting just about every type that you can along the way.

NW: I didn’t realize that but you’re right. Um, ok what made me consider grad school, all right. Well, I was just, I was more than ready to graduate with my bachelor’s degree. I was ready to get out. I, you know, I didn’t enjoy college because it was just one more thing to do. You know I wanted to get out, get a job, start earning money that was my main goal. You know, I wanted to be as done and over with Shippensburg as fast as possible. Um, but also I had something called, you know, the history major. Um, its not one of the most marketable majors right now um.

AS: Let’s hope that when some historian is watching this thirty years from now that’s changed.

NW: Oh I’m hoping. Um, but, what made me go to-. I was all excited about finally graduating, I finally made it here. I was interning at AHEC, Army Heritage and Education Center here in Carlisle. And my internship boss, or director or whatever he was called uh, he sort of you know, gave me the, a sort of tough love speech saying you know, don’t expect anyone to take you seriously in history if you do not have at least a master’s degree in it, You need a master’s degree to get your foot in the door at least. And, you know, I didn’t say anything to him but I went home, kind of, kind of depressed and upset because I thought here I put in all these you know hours of work, you know, sweat blood and tears and everything, all these years wasted and I thought and I’ve got nothing to show for it. And I kind of you know, did what every young adult does you know I think and go cry to mom about it. I told her what she, I asked her what she thought about it and she said well, “How you gonna pay for it” and I said I don’t know, cause at the point I uh, I didn’t have a job. I had odd jobs like house sitting for people and they would pay me cash, Gosh this was 2012.

AS: So that’s basically how you out yourself through college, various odd jobs and that kind of thing?

NW: Yes.       

AS: Ok.

NW: Like I said the Bosler Library, um I worked here with Mr. March for the summer camps, he paid me very well. Then at this time when I was thinking about grad school, so I guess this was 2014, last year, I had just spent the summer working for PennDot. And, that pays very well it was the best paying job I ever had.

AS: What job did you do there?

NW: I was a temp worker, I was a flagger.

AS: Oh you were the one who does the sign.

NW: Yea, among other things I did, that’s pretty much my job description, and it paid fourteen bucks and hour, and I couldn’t top that, with a temporary job, um so I did work a few different places, I was a hostess at a restaurant. That lasted all about six months. So I’ve had at least, I think two jobs at least going at the same time for since I was about 17. So I was able to get a lot of money that’s way, but then again, you have to remember I was living at home. My electric bill, my heating, everything was pretty much paid for there. Um, the only thing I really had to pay for was uh, the gas in my car and my textbooks.

AS: So the school expenses and that. Ok.

NW: Ok, so getting back to grad school, 2014, you know I asked my mom what she thought of it, and she said you need to, you need to find out how you’re going to pay for grad school. So she sort of drug me along the next day to the school, to Shippensburg University, and we had a sit down with the uh, sort of the, grad advisor or something, I forget what his name was. Jeremy, his first name was Jeremy.

AS: Oh Jeremy Goshorn.

NW: Yea.

AS: Yea.

NW: And he pretty much broke it down and showed me how much each semester would cost me. And at the time, I had enough money in the bank probably to get me through only a semester and a half, and I said I can’t do this. And he said ah, we also have something called GAships, and they’re grad assistantships where uh, you work for Shippensburg University and they will pay yo-, they will wa-, they will pay for your um, tuition and they will pay to ten dollars and hour to work. He said it’s highly competitive, I’m not saying you’re going to get in but it’s worth a shot. And I told mom, I said I’m gonna apply for it and I filled out the paper work and if I don’t get one GAship then I’m not going, it’s done, I’m not going to get my master’s cause I didn’t want to go it debt up to my eyeballs to pay for this. Just because you know I’m scared of you know, using money that I don’t have I’d rather pay with cash up front.

AS: That frugal nature you were talking about there.

NW: Yea that frugal farmer nature that was instilled in me from my dad I guess. So I said that’s the lynch pin, If I don’t get the GAship, then I’m not, we’re gonna forget this ever happened and I’ll just deal with it. Um, but as it turns out I did get the Grad assistantship so, I kind of really didn’t really have time to think about it But at one point I’m sure I thought oh wow I’m actually gonna get my master’s degree. This is something that I never thought I would ever do, something I never thought I would want to do, something that I never thought I could have the opportunity to do. So, I wasn’t excited about it I guess. I just, I was busy with the last few weeks of finals and my undergrad work and um.

AS: There’s also that fact that it’s just another two years of your school marathon.

NW: I though now I gotta do, now I gotta do more work, so I really was not excited. My mom was so happy she’s like “we need to go out to like Applebee’s and celebrate” and I really just didn’t want to. I was not in a celebratory mood.

AS: Alright.

NW: I was like I got work to do I can’t do this right now.

AS: Well um, I have one other question about Shippensburg. Obviously you’ve been there five years now you’ve been around the school for quite a while.

NW: Six.

AS: Ok six years you’ve been around.

NW: Undergrad took about, let’s see 09 to, no it took me, yea five years. I graduated in 14.

AS: Ok.

NW: 2014 so-

AS: So you’ve been around there for about six years now.

NW: Yea.

AS: Ok, um obviously I go there too and one thing I’ve noticed since moving into this area cause I’m not from here is I was rather floored by the um, amount of friction almost, almost hostility between the Borough of Shippensburg and the student body at Shippensburg. Not necessarily the University but the student body. I was wondering if you had any like comments on that cause it’s a little unusual compared to other college campuses I’ve visited

NW: Um

AS: Seeing as you’re local to Cumberland County I was wondering what your opinion on that was.

NW: Well, even growing up when I was like a teenager we always, it seems like everyone in the Cumberland Valley knew that Shippensburg  “oh that’s the party school”. That’s where you go to party, it’s a big party school, you know they, kids just got there to party. Um, so that was one of the things I was worried about when I was going there. I’m like ok, can’t get sucked into any bad habits, I don’t want to come out an alcoholic, I want to, you know, keep on this road that I’m walking and I want to be successful and lets not party too hard here and let’s keep our head on straight. Um, why Shippensburg, I think because the university is so, I don’t know close to…

AS: Well yea, they share a town so.

NW: Yea, I don’t know. Maybe there’s a lot of, I know that there’s a lot of complaints that um, you know with college students, they bring in the drug lords I guess to town and that’s where their market is and that’s how they sell it and. I guess.

AS: So that’s kind of like the local’s-

NW: The local’s

AS: Opinion of the students at Shippensburg, they’re just here to party more or less.

NW: Yea, the locals are like “oh they’re lazy, they’re riff-raff, they’re just here to waste their parent’s money and drink.”

AS: Hmm. Sounds like we need to work on that. (laughs)

NW: Good for local businesses though, like if there’s a place to eat, college kids man they got, they got the money to spend or supposedly.

AS: Ok, well are there any other like um, big events, or just anything ab out your life that you wanted to uh, talk about, or elaborate on or anything? Any particular memories uh, that you feel should be, that I didn’t cover with my questions or anything?

NW: Um, not that I can think of right now.

AS: Hmmm, one thing I probably should ask is ah, like with the Gardner Library thing we like to record ah, people’s memories of big, significant events and you’re too young to remember a majority of them, like Hurricane Agnes, or Three Mile Island and all that, but one that you did live through was ah September 11^th.

NW: Yes.

AS: Um, what are your memories of that? Cause it’s pretty much burned into all of our memories.

NW: Yea, it’s one of those memories where you know, you’ll always remember, like where were you when Kennedy was shot or something else like that.

AS: Ok.

NW: So that was September 11^th, 2011.

AS: Don’t you mean 1?

NW: Oh yea not 11, oooo 1, excuse me! 2001 uh.

AS: How old would you have been then?

NW: I would have been eleve- no 2001, I would have been 11.

AS: Ok.

NW: I was born in 1999- 1990! So I can usually follow.

AS: Yea it’s easy, it’s easy to keep your age.

NW: It’s easier.

AS: Yea.

NW: 2001 so, yea I would have been 10 or 11. It was a nice day I remember, um mom usually had the ah, we had a little TV in our kitchen and so when, you know after breakfast she’d get us started on our work books or whatever and ah, she’d go into the kitchen and like listen to the tv while doing the dishes. Well she called us into the kitchen, she said you know “girls look at this” you know, “I think it was an accident, I think someone accidentally drove a plane into a building.” And I said “Well it’s kind of a big target” you know, how do you not see that and uh you know we were seeing this all the first image, it was when the first tower was struck and I could see the smoke coming out of the one tower, and we were just sitting there and mom was like, “well I don’t think we’re going to get much school work done today why don’t we, you know this is historical, why don’t you just sit in here and watch this and then we’ll write a paper about it later.” So uh, thanks mom.

AS: So your mom inadvertently gave you a front row seat to that.

NW: Yea. Which is pretty cool, cause if I was at public school, you know maybe we would have had to follow the schedule, we can’t be late for classes, I don’t know.

AS: I was in a public school and the minute they figured out what was going on they, they sealed us off from it.

NW: Oh.

AS: They didn’t want us to know. Um because, they weren’t sure how to handle it so, it’s interesting what a homeschooler went through, so.

NW: That’s so sad.

AS: Yea, but um.

NW: Yea block us off from the real world, that’s one thing mom didn’t want to do. So ah, she said, you know-

AS: How’d you react when you guys figured out that it wasn’t an accident?

NW: Um, I was really ah, scared. Because I was sitting there you know, watching TV, watching it on the screen, Steph decided to bake chocolate chip cookies. My sister Stephanie, so she was busy doing that and um, we saw another plane come in on the screen, and hit the tower.

AS: You actually saw the second tower hit live.

NW: Yea and I said, you know, ten years old, I really wasn’t thinking critically at that time but I thought you know “They hit it again? Was this time an accident?” And of course, the news anchor I don’t remember if it was a he or a she or what they looked like but they, they were like “Oh my goodness, I don’t think this is an accident, this is like another Pearl Harbor” and ah it was kind of scary and I said well, are we gonna, I asked mom I said “ are they gonna attack anything around here?” and she goes “Well, I don’t know, there’s really nothing of importance close by Carlisle, I would think that they would try and attack the ah, the White House first” And I guess a little later in the day we found out they attacked the Pentagon, they hit the Pentagon. So um it was kind of scary and at the end of the day you know, I asked dad, cause he got home from work, he was working at the Turnpike at the time, he still does uh, and I said “are we going to war? Is America gonna go to war with these people who did it?” Cause we’d just seen Bush’s speech uh, which that’s when I first became a little, you know, intrigued with politics. Growing up I always wanted to be like a, a reporter, ah and then I heard Bush’s speech and I was like “Wow this is so cool, I like listening to stuff like this” and uh, I said “Are we gonna go to war dad?” and he goes “no we’re not gonna go to war.” Ah which, one of the few times that my dad was actually wrong about something.

AS: Yea, we’re still at war.

NW: We’re still at war. But I asked him that question because growing up I would always read the ah American Girl Series books, and they had a bunch of wars and stuff that I would always read about and I’m like “Wow, this is gonna be just like one of those historical characters, we’re gonna go to a war just like they did back then.” Just keep in mind I had, you know, I knew nothing about-

AS: Yea, ten years old so.

NW: I knew nothing about um Operation um, Desert Storm.

AS: Yea Desert Storm, that would have been the last one we’d been in.

NW: I hadn’t, at that time I knew nothing about that, so I thought that wow wars are what happened back in the past and now we’re gonna do that, this is so cool and…

AS: Not the reaction I’d expect.

NW: That was you know, ten year old eleven year old me thinking “Oh, we’re reliving history, this is awesome!”

AS: Alright, well, I guess that’s one way of looking at it. Ok well I don’t really have any other questions so if you, do you have anything else you want to say?

NW: Nope, I think I’m good.

AS: Ok, well thank you for participating then.

NW: You’re welcome.

END OF INTERVIEW