If I’m ever missing, look for me at Guy’s Medical Center Pharmacy on Marion Avenue, where I get my prescription refills.
Seems like I’m there at least two or three times a month, and over time you get to know some of the employees, especially the front desk clerks. A couple of weeks ago, one of them, a redhead named Ashley Cockerham with a perpetual smile on her face, showed me the screen of her cellphone.
It had a picture of her GED diploma from Southwest Mississippi Community College — quite an achievement for a 35-year-old. She was clearly proud to have a high school-equivalency degree, and I correctly figured there was an interesting story behind it.
She dropped out of school at age 16 and got married. “I thought I knew everything and I was wrong,” she remarked. “I quit school on Sept 14, 2006 and married him on Sept. 15th. I was two weeks into the ninth grade.”
Both her parents signed documents consenting to the marriage.
“My dad didn’t want me to, but I said, ‘I don’t want to hear anything from you,’ ” she said. She believed her husband “was going to protect me, he loved me. I thought he would, but boy, did I get fooled.
“He was 22 and I was 16 when we got married. He used to work with my mom at Wal-Mart. But I was hardheaded. Young and dumb.”
Cockerham said trouble started after a couple of months. They finally divorced in 2014.
“We were married eight years,” she said. “I wanted to prove to my mom and dad that I could stay married. Thought I could do it. My mom and dad have been together 38 years.”
She’s been with her current boyfriend for the past six years, “and he’s something,” she said. “He told me to work on me, so that’s what I’m doing.”
Cockerham started working at 17. Her first job was at the old Pizza Inn on Delaware Avenue. She worked at the Hampton Inn, and then Applebee’s for nine years, where she was “everything but a bartender.”
She started at Guy’s four years ago when her sister Heather, who was already working there, got her the job.
“I never thought I would actually love a job, but I do,” she said. “I like interacting with people. I get along with everybody.”
She credits her sister and her boyfriend, Michael Leibenguth, for nudging her back to the classroom after so many years.
My boyfriend graduated two years early from high school,” she said. “He told me the only way I was going to get through life like I wanted to was to get an education. My sister helped me find the GED school at Southwest, and she said, you have to do it.”
It took Cockerham 11 months to pass all five tests, which include math, science, social studies, language arts and graphic literacy.
She had quit school so early that almost none of the subject matter was familiar. The classes also cut into her hours at work, which was costing her money. She thought about dropping out, as she had done once before in 2008.
She didn’t believe she could earn the degree. But this month, Cockerham walked across a stage at Southwest, shook President Steve Bishop’s hand and received a diploma. It was her first graduation ceremony since she finished the sixth grade.
“I had two ladies in my class that were older than me, and I had a gentleman in his 60s,” she said. “Most were teens or in their 20s. Some were high school-age kids that had been kicked out of school.
“The 60-year-old man, he was convicted of a felony when he was 16 or 17. He’s like a dad to all the young ones in there.”
With a degree, Cockerham has plans. “I am actually starting my pharmacy tech classes in July,” she said. “They actually fill the prescriptions and do the insurance filing. They count the pills, they do it all. It’s like one step beneath a pharmacist.”
It’s so easy to put down dropouts and GED students: Quitters. Lazy. Get a job.
Sometimes that’s true. But I suspect a lot of GED stories are more like Ashley’s: A stubborn teenager. A bad decision. A chance to correct a mistake.
The world’s pace of change is picking up. If you know somebody who dropped out of high school but has potential, put them in touch with Southwest’s GED program at 601-276-3836.
