Gini Jones Profile

Gini Jones felt constrained.
It was the mid 1990s. She was 40 years old, a teacher's aide with a high school
degree in Santa Fe New Mexico, still living in her parents' house. She looked out the window from her cramped office.
No longer would she tolerate performing menial tasks such as bringing the principal his coffee, cleaning his messy desk and redoing the bulletin board.
"I don't want to do this anymore," she remembered thinking.
Now 52, Jones, who wears glasses and has vibrant red hair, is a graduate teaching assistant in the communication studies department at the University of Kansas. She's earned her bachelor's, master's and is on her way to earning her Ph.D.
"Fate moves us and we have to be willing to take those directions," she said.
It wasn't the path she planned on. She never intended, for instance, to live with her parents' for 20 years.
"It seems odd," Jones said in between bites of her Greek salad. "But it wasn't odd to us. It was an economic necessity."
Her father, Bernie, who worked for the State at the time, was faced with an ethical dilemma. He was asked to do things with federal grant money that he considered unethical. Because of those circumstances, he quit his job.
In 1977, when Jones was 21, her parents pulled her out of college her junior year to work to help support the family. Education was very important in her family. Both of her parent's have degrees in education. Her father began teaching industrial arts and eventually moved into urban planning; her mother, Mary Beth, taught elementary and high school. Penny, her sister, is also a teacher.
"The whole teaching thing was very engrained," Jones said.
Greta Wendelin, a close friend and colleague in the communication studies department, said that Jones is not someone bound by time. She commended the way her friend responded to being pulled out of college.
"Something like that, an unforeseen circumstance, you have to learn how to deal with it," Wendelin said. "She dealt with it in a productive way, by going back and working at a high school for 20 years. Making the decision to go back to college that speaks to the kind of person she is."
Jones holds no anger towards her parent's decision, but wishes she would have been more vocal.
"I felt like I didn't stand up for myself to my parent's and say 'look, I really want to see if I can make a go of this and not move home," she said.
After her parent's pulled her out of school, she bounced around for awhile, and then she became a teacher's aide at Santa Fe High School in New Mexico. She also ran the college and career center. She learned to write and communicate. She became interested in rhetoric, the use of words in terms of persuasion. It was here that she started making a name for herself.
"I did that by not only meeting the standards of the job, but exceeding them," Jones said.
Though she was excelling in the workforce, she felt constrained by her current situation.
"I did feel lost, I didn't have a college degree," Jones said. "At this point a lot of my friends did. One of my best friends was working on her doctorate."
In January of 2006, she applied to the doctorate program at KU. In late February, she received an acceptance letter from the KU communication studies doctorate program.
In July of 2006, after working in the Santa Fe School district for 20 years, she submitted her letter of resignation. She describes this as one of the scariest moments in her life.
"I cut ties with a job that paid, had health benefits and had a retirement account," she said.
In August of 2006, she rented an apartment online, she packed up the cat and drove from Santa Fe, N.M., to Lawrence, Kan.

Ryan Shepard, a friend and graduate teaching assistant in communication studies, admires the resilience of his colleague.
"She has done very well at getting back into school and in a way taking criticism so she can improve," he said.
Mary Beth Asbury, a good friend who shares an office with Jones, said she is inspired by her friend's passion for teaching.
"She cares about students' learning," Asbury said. "She's always trying to find ways to teach and help, rather than just grade them."
Jones said that she would not change the course her life has taken.