Spring — 2006

Kimberlee Buchanan

Early Childhood Development

“You’ve got teachers here who are so passionate about what they’re doing that you say to yourself, ‘Hey! Maybe I could get that passionate about doing something too!’ ”

After a year and a half at SMC, Kimberlee Buchanan could simply report, “I love it! I’ve had all these teachers with PhDs, and I never thought I’d find that in a community college. The quality of instruction here is amazing because these people really take education seriously. So I feel like I’m really gonna be ready to go off to UCLA.” In an embarrassment of riches, SMC’s teacher actually had Kimberlee in quite a quandary. “I was in Psych, but then I had an English teacher who had me tearing off in that direction. But then I had another Psych teacher—Dr. Gunn—and I flipped right back to that. And now I’m just gonna stick with Early Childhood studies, because I’ve always wanted to work with kids. And Dr. Gunn absolutely turned my life around. ”

Kimberlee says that her arrival at SMC was one of lowered expectations. “I thought, ‘I’ll go, make my grade, develop no relationships, and then move on to a four-year school.’ Wrong!” she says with a booming laugh. “I never expected to actually want to be with my teachers on my days off. But there I was, helping them out even as they helped me. They’d even check out my papers for other classes, and I was like, ‘Wow!’ ”

But Kimberlee’s educational past wasn’t one that had her using words like ‘passionately’ very often. “I’ve had counselors here who let me know that I could qualify for zero tuition and free books. And I said to them, ‘Where were you guys 15 years ago?’ And I had an online class in Nutrition with Laura Manson that was crazy-successful. She had everything organized from Day One. And before she started that class, she fixed everything that she hated about online study. With teachers like her around, I said to myself, ‘Don’t go home. Stay right here and find out all that those buildings and those people hold in store for you.’ ”

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