Second in a three-part series.

BY COLIN HICKEY

Staff Writer

Jessica Shoudy always loved to read and delighted in artistic and intellectual pursuits. But school did not work for her.

So she dropped out.

"I guess I just got lost. I was extremely rebellious and I never really..." the 24-year-old Shoudy said, pausing to find the right words. "I was frustrated, because there were a lot of things I wanted to pursue, a lot of things I was interested in, and I felt stifled a lot of the time. I felt I wasn't learning what I wanted to learn." Shoudy, who lives in Waterville, left Skowhegan Area High School her freshman year nine years ago, never to return.

Monica Kittredge, 29, did the same at Gardiner Area High School.

Both women enrolled in Waterville Adult Education and earned their General Educational Development degrees, or GEDs, last spring.

Each described the graduation as an emotional experience, all the stronger for being delayed so long.

"I cried," Kittredge said. "I cried very hard. I almost feel like I'm going to cry now just talking about it."

Waterville Adult Education Director Lin Hallowell said most of the 44 students in the latest graduating class were high school dropouts, including 14 who had gone to Waterville Senior High School.

Hallowell said for many of those students, earning a GED is about healing from the stigma of being a dropout.

"I think that it is terrible that we do that to students," Hallowell said. "What a terrible thing to be classified as -- a dropout."

Rough road

For both Shoudy and Kittredge, the years between dropping out and obtaining their GEDs were often tough.

They worked many menial jobs and, especially for the first few years after dropping out, bounced back and forth from living independently to moving home.

Kittredge said her father was not around when she was a child and her mother, although there, was not able to control her, especially when she began to get involved with drugs and alcohol.

"Until I got to about eighth grade, I was an honor roll student," she said. "I did really well in school. But after eighth grade, it all went downhill."

Kittredge's life was a mobile one growing up. She said she attended 10 to 11 schools before she reached high school -- Kittredge initially attended Skowhegan Area High School, living with her grandparents at the time.

By the time Kittredge transferred to Gardiner Area High School, she had strayed far from her days as an honor roll student.

"I got to hanging out with the wrong group of people and went the wrong path," she said. "I thought going out and partying was a little more important than going to school."

Kittredge doesn't blame teachers or school administrators for her decision to drop out.

Her homeroom teacher in high school, she said, took a special interest in her welfare.

"He actually used to come to my house in the morning to make sure I was coming to school," she said.

Such efforts, though, were not enough.

Kittredge said most of her friends were already out of school. She elected to follow them.

Shoudy, too, said she had some teachers who reached out to her: an elementary school instructor who encouraged her to develop as a writer; a Spanish teacher in eighth grade, with whom she shared a mutual interest in anthropology.

In general, though, Shoudy said she felt teachers didn't hear her and classmates didn't share her interest in reading and other intellectual pursuits.

"It is amazing how many people are opposed to reading," she said.

Shoudy is hesitant to talk about her family situation other than to say "we have come a long way as a family. We were all lost (during my teenage years), and my mom was young. She was still growing up herself."

Shoudy lived in the home of a boyfriend's parents for awhile and periodically moved back home with her mother.

She did odd jobs, housekeeping and other "under-the-table stuff" to earn an income. Her mother provided support as well.

"My mom was still helping," she said, "giving me money and stuff like that, and my basic needs were taken care of most of the time."

When she turned 18, Shoudy started to live more independently. At that point, she said, she began to realize how difficult surviving on your own can be without a high school degree.

"When I left school I was really lost for awhile," she said. "I was discouraged. I still read. I mean I've always read ... but I didn't have confidence in myself to pursue the things I thought were interesting."

Embracing education

Kittredge had her first child at 18 and her second one three years later -- her daughter is now 10, her son 6.

Her children, especially her daughter, she said, proved to be the catalysts that led her to Waterville Adult Education.

Kittredge said her daughter often complained about school and challenged her when she tried to stress the importance of education.

Her daughter, she said, would say "you dropped out of school" -- a comment that left Kittredge with little to say in response.

She realized eventually that the only way for her to reach her daughter was to return to school and earn her degree.

"I thought it would be important for me to be a good role model," she said, "to show my kids that mom did go back and finish school."

In Shoudy's case, the inspiration came from the people she met working as a waitress at Grand Central Cafe in Waterville.

For the first time, she began to find people who shared her interest in film, literature and other artistic and cultural subjects. That discovery, she said, began to draw her out of her shell and consider going back to school.

"They all have a story," said Hallowell, the Waterville Adult Education director. "They all dropped out of school for one reason or another. Sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's trouble at school. From the very moment they call, our secretary is a great cheerleader. She tells them when they come through the door that they already have done the toughest part."

Kittredge and Shoudy both are full of praise for the adult-education program.

They found the support and understanding they thought was missing in their childhood educations. That inspired them to put in the hard work necessary to pass a series of five GED tests.

Hallowell said earning a GED is not easy. About 40 percent of regular high school graduates, she said, would fail the GED.

Kittredge said her mother and grandmother attended her graduation ceremony and shared in the pride of the accomplishment.

"We kind of all cried as a family," she said. "My mom and grandmother came, and everybody was really proud of me. It was an emotional thing."

Shoudy spoke at the graduation. She was flattered, she said, to be asked to share her thoughts.

And today she is a student at the University of Maine at Augusta, starting the next stage in her plan to earn a graduate degree in the social sciences.

She is happy about the road she is on now, but she wishes she had not gone astray earlier and wonders what might have been if she had had better guidance, a caring adult encouraging her to excel in the classroom.

"I just needed one more little push," she said. "I think I was very close. I have my regrets sometimes. I feel old sometimes. I felt like I spent five or six years just completely lost. If I had used that time, I'd probably be in grad school now instead of on the way ... I wanted to learn. It just wasn't there for me."

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com