I’m going to tell you why I am here, and as a result of that story, you will learn a little bit about who I am. First of all my name is Stacy Shackelford Arick. I like to include that maiden name in there because I am proud of it. I am proud of the father who gave it to me. My son, Matthew, who is my pride and joy, was adopted when I was single and is still a Shackelford. Matthew never had the joy of knowing the granddaddy who sired three daughters and no sons, but he chose to honor him when given the choice by proudly bearing my father’s name and its eleven letters into the future.
As mentioned I am one of three daughters, but my story is much more complicated than that. I may or may not share some of those details in the future. Complications always make for fine stories so it would be worth your time to look for some elaboration in future posts. I was born and raised in California until the age of eleven when my mother and father decided that life would be easier moving back to my father’s home state of Georgia so off we went. While maturing and matriculating in Covington, Georgia, I found Jesus which was has been the greatest decision of my life. He became my true friend “who sticks closer than a brother” and we have been together since my sixth grade in school. He is why I am writing this post today, but I will get to that in a minute.
I attended Asbury College, which is now a University, where I was a proud member of the Olympian Class. It was at Asbury that I perfected one of my greatest skills, indecisiveness. I moved through majors like a duck gliding through water. Finally in my junior year, it became clear to me that I had to make a final decision and choose a major. I perused my list of completed electives and realized that all of them were literature courses, and just like that, procrastination and a love of reading had officially set the course for the rest of my life. I would be an English major. There was however one small problem. I had parents who had done their jobs quite well, and they had made it abundantly clear I had to be able to live independently within a short period of time after graduation. With this in mind, I decided to investigate the possibility of adding an English Secondary Education degree onto the English. Back in the 1980s, the best decade ever, we actually tried to get jobs with our degrees. I didn’t think I wanted to teach, but I took did a teaching practicum at a middle school, and I fell in love with the idea of teaching.
I ended up working in the field of public education for thirty years with a little detour along the way into the world of corporate training. I got myself married to an Arick, and we raised an amazing young man, and then I officially retired from teaching in 2020. I have worked in various education related positions since then which brings me back to why I am here writing this.
Stacy Arick