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Like Mother, Like Daughter: Millers Make Graduation a Family Affair

Posted on: Friday, 12 May 2006, 09:07 CDT

By Grant Smith, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

May 12--WVU NAMES scholarship recipients. Page 12-B.

Amanda Miller will mark one of life's milestones this weekend, when she graduates from WVU with a fine arts degree.

But it won't be a lonely walk -- she'll graduate with her mother, Morgantown City Councilwoman Teresa Miller.

Few people attend college with their parents (or their children), but Teresa and Amanda say it's really no big deal.

"It was rather ordinary for us," Teresa said. "I think she's used to her mother ... being visible and being around her and a lot of people knowing me. So we shared a lot of common friends, and I think everybody else accepted that as well."

Teresa began her education 36 years ago at Marshall University in Huntington, but took a long break -- until the spring of 1997, when she re-enrolled in school at WVU.

Huntington at the time was still coping with a plane crash that killed the football team, some faculty, administrators and others. That event is the subject of "We Are Marshall," which stars Matthew McConaughey and is being filmed there now.

"I think a lot of things were going on," Teresa said. "The crash affected a lot of students at that time, and you know, a lot of students start and just don't finish."

Teresa got married and eventually moved to Morgantown, where Amanda, now 22, was born. Amanda also has an older brother, Jeff, who's 28.

And then, in 1997, Teresa decided to go back to school, just as Amanda became a teenager.

"Amanda was a really independent and well-behaved child," Teresa said. "I decided I could take a little more time for myself. I just really wanted that degree, so I stuck with it." with it."

Amanda said it seemed pretty normal for her mother to be attending school while she was growing up.

"There was nothing irregular or anything about it, because when I was growing up it was just like she had a job to go to," Amanda said.

Teresa said going back to school scared her, but knew it was what she wanted.

"I just know I was terrified about going back to school, but the professors were very accepting and very helpful -- so were the students," Teresa said. She didn't study with many of them, though, and didn't join any student groups -- there just wasn't enough time.

"I had to do council, I had to do school, I had to do family and occasionally I held down a job," Teresa said. "There really wasn't much time for extracurricular activities.

"I have council duties, and those are duties that I really can't slack on," she said. "Those things have to be taken care of first and foremost, and then I worked also and went to school. So it's just like everybody else who works and has a family -- you just have to be extraordinarily organized."

Amanda studied art, while her mother focused on women's studies, so they were on different campuses and didn't see a whole lot of each other at school, Amanda said. But they ran into each other on campus every now and again.

"I would give her an amicable 'hello,' and she was never overprotective or condescending to me or too parental to me, I suppose," Amanda said.

But one semester they saw a lot of each other. They had Geology 103 together, and since they were seated in alphabetical order, "we would talk to each other a lot," Amanda said.

"She made a better grade than I did," Teresa said. "I think we went out to lunch after that class a lot of times, and I think that's how we stayed connected, really."

After graduation, Amanda plans on looking for a job in commercial design and figuring out what she wants to study in graduate school, which she expects to begin in the fall of 2007.

Which could be any number of things, if she follows her mother's advice and in her footsteps.

"You should not be afraid to try new things, and you shouldn't let other people's opinions keep you from doing what you really want to do," Teresa said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

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Source: The Dominion Post (Morgantown, W.Va.)

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