Name Change Form PDE 338 D

     I went to college for four years.  Did extracurricular activities.  Worked 2-3 jobs at a time.  I once worked a whole summer with not a single day off.  I worked nights after student teaching all day.  I made Dean's List.  I graduated in December of '94 after teaching third and sixth grades successfully.  I went right into substitute teaching.  I worked so often in the same schools that I was requested often.  I would get calls in the summer that would set up a whole year of subbing.  In May of '97 I got married.  I walked into the office at my favorite school and told them that I was moving.  The woman in charge of subs at that time...froze...her mouth dropped open...she said, "You had a job come September!".  I moved as planned and never taught again.  I never got my Masters.  I never completed my Act 48 credits.  I packed up my subbing bags and took job after job that paid the bills and gave my family benefits and security.  Those jobs got me through two decades and two children.  Someday I would teach again.  Someday I would go back to school.  Someday I would get to do the thing I was born to do. 
     Life changes things.  People get older.  People get ill.  Jobs are lost.  Couples separate.  Housing markets drop.  Long before shut off notices there was hope in a future.  Way before medical bills there were dreams.  Looking for a new house took time...not worrying about losing one to foreclosure.    There was a time when I didn't lie awake at night panicked about my future...both immediate and distant.  I worried about the simple things.  What I wouldn't do to go back there.  Months ago I started back on the path to teach only to find out that I had to do many things all over again.  Oh and then was the small detail that had to be taken care of...a name change.  My certificate still says, "Pugliese".  A bitter reminder of the tomorrow that I worked so hard for yesterday.  So here I am almost fifteen years later requesting a name change.  Turns out that Karma isn't the only one who can be a bitch...Irony does alright as well...