Nothing to Fear
Psychology major Margaret Schwartz of Amherst is one of HCC's Profiles of Excellence for Commencement 2021.
To say she was a little bit nervous starting out at Holyoke Community College doesn't quite get there for Margaret Schwartz.
"I was terrified," she says. "I'm not gonna lie. I was really scared about it. I know I'm smart, and I don't mean that in an arrogant way, just that I'm confident I'm an intelligent person. But there's a difference between intelligence and formal education, and I was not formally educated. I dropped out of high school in the middle of my junior year, and that was decades ago."
Nevertheless, in the classrooms of HCC, Schwartz, now 43, conquered her fears in spectacular fashion.
This spring, in her final semester, she was awarded the Marion W. Copeland Honors Program Scholarship. As the top student in history, she received the Alice Guimond History Award – and history is not even her major. That would be psychology, for which she received the 2021 Award for Excellence.
Schwartz is so highly regarded by her HCC professors that one of them, English professor Patricia Kennedy, said this: "Margaret has gone so far beyond our usual expectations that we sometimes forget that she's a student and not a colleague."
Reflecting on her anxious early days, Schwartz says, "I really didn't know what I was getting into. Being so much older than a significant portion of my classmates I was not sure how that was going to work, so I was pleasantly surprised. It worked out well."
Indeed, it did.
On June 5, Schwartz graduated with high honors and her associate degree in psychology. She will continue her studies in September as an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College, an achievement she credits to her HCC professors and advisers.
"I feel like I've had such an incredible support system, it really blows my mind," she says. "I feel this really deep gratitude and love for what I've been given."
Schwartz has come a long way from a tumultuous childhood. She grew up in a small Indiana town, the only child of a single mother suffering from untreated schizophrenia.
"By the time I was 15 her mental health had deteriorated to the point where I could no longer live with her," Schwartz says.
She moved to Indianapolis to live with an aunt. Unsettled, she partied too hard, got pregnant, and left school. By 17, Schwartz was married and by 21 raising three daughters as a full-time, stay-at-home mom.
Later on, divorced and living in Arizona, she became a birth educator, doula, and licensed midwife. Eventually, she relocated to western Massachusetts to be with her fiancé (now her wife). Chronic illness - and state licensing requirements – prevented her from working as a midwife in Massachusetts. Instead, she tried other jobs: freelance writer, online reseller, Uber/Lyft driver.
As her health improved, she faced what she calls an "existential crisis" about her future. Up late one night with insomnia, she impulsively applied to HCC.
"I decided that what I really wanted to do was what I had wanted to do when I was a teenager, before my life got derailed," she says. "I wanted to go to college to become a psychologist."
Choosing HCC made sense to her. "HCC has a reputation for getting students ready for transfer, which is something I knew I wanted to do" – though Schwartz initially lacked confidence that she would succeed.
One thing that particularly terrified her was math, thanks to a math phobia instilled by a horrible, third-grade teacher who told her she was not and would never be good at it. A breakthrough came in "Statistics for Psychology," where Prof. Michelle Williams encouraged Schwartz and her classmate to share their mistakes out loud and at high volume, "so we can catch them," she said.
"I don't want to hear that you're not good at math," Williams told the class. "It isn't magic. It doesn't only work for some people. If you're a psych major, you should know about self-fulfilling prophecies."
Schwartz loved it and got an A: "Once that clicked, I realized if I can get past that I can probably handle anything that's thrown at me."
A voracious reader with a keen interest in research, history and social justice, she excelled in Honors and Learning Community courses like "Fight the Power: The History and Stories of Worker Resistance in the U.S.," and "Is Prison Necessary? Reimagining Incarceration."
Her interest in psychology stems from personal experience. Her mother had her first psychotic break when Schwartz was 11. "My formative years were spent with someone who was unmedicated, and I saw how she devolved," Schwartz says. "She had been a kind and caring person and become someone else entirely."
"As a kid, I tried to get her help and ended up instead being taken away, and she ended up homeless," Schwartz says. "It was a mess."
Later in life, her mother finally found appropriate treatment.
"It was pretty amazing to kind of recognize her again," says Schwartz. "So I saw the good and bad in the system. When it's good, when it works well, it can be life-saving, miraculous, and when it doesn't work, when it's bad, it's really bad."
For the summer, Schwartz is continuing her work as a volunteer with the Trevor Project, a national, suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ youth, and looking forward to Smith College – without fear.
"I feel like I've been given such an incredible opportunity and been provided with such a solid base," Schwartz says. "I have been so prepared that I'm going in confident because I've been so supported and challenged by the incredible professors I've had at HCC."
PHOTOS by CHRIS YURKO: Margaret Schwartz
