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Lane on the left with Miquia (a former classmate of mine)
This was taken at a class party in our English class in Fall 2010

Name: Lane
Three words to describe yourself: evolving, contemplative, questioning
Lane lived in Birmingham, Alabama until the age of 14 and then she moved to Little Siwickley, Pennslyvania, which is on the Ohio River and also had the highest alcoholism rate. "Every kid had a parent who was an alcoholic," Lane said. After a year, her dad wanted to get away, so they moved to the suburbs of Pittsburg. The year after that, her family moved to New Jersey where Lane graduated high school. Because she promised her grandmother that she would got to school in the south, Lane went to the University of Alabama. Lane said that Alabama "wasn't a very good academic experience," so she after her freshman year, she attended Upsala College in New Jersey to study English. "I wanted to read and talk about reading!" Lane said. After graduating from college, Lane tried to get a job in accounting, but at every job interview, she was told that she had to take a typing test. She then went to secretarial school and she says, "I was humiliated to the core that I had to do that to get a job as a secretary." After three years of working as a secretary, Lane had been accepted to NYU for graduate school, but she chose not to go because she was married in New Jersey and chose to have a child instead. She moved to Georgia because her husband got transferred and then they moved back to New Jersey. After Lane got divorced, she tried to get into magazine publishing, but she started working in the advertising department for a weekly newspaper. "I got into it thinking it would be a stepping stone for writing for the paper," she says, but Lane enjoyed the sales part more. "It was very creative," she comments. As a single mom with two boys, Lane moved back to the South where she worked for the Marietta Journal Constitution. She said, "I thought I was coming home to the same family owned type I had in Jersey, but I was met with the 'good ol' boy system'," so she had to "start over." After working for six months for the AJC, Lane took out all of her savings and went to Kennesaw State University to get her teaching certification. Now, Lane teaches high school English and says, "I learn so much from every group of kids I have . . . they always show me something I haven't seen before . . . they show me about human nature." Currently, Lane would like to become a grandmother and also says, "I'm excited to retire so I can reinvent myself . . . I also want to see if I have a book in me, but every English teacher says that." Lane also wants to travel back to Italy and to see Prague. Margaret Atwood is her favorite author and The Prince of Tides is one of her all time favorite books.