“We weren’t the kids who got the new bike on Christmas. We had food and clothing and a warm home but no extra money. When I was really little, I didn’t get it. Even though they had a lot of financial stress, my parents didn’t talk to us about it. My dad was a teacher. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. I had a sickly older brother, sickly older sister, so that’s where a lot of the money went.
My parents lived for their five kids. They really fostered education and were very encouraging. However, when you’re young, you see your parents as parents. You don’t have the maturity to understand them and appreciate them as human beings and the struggles they had. That’s why sometimes it’s easier to take advice from someone who is not a relative but whom you respect.
In high school, I had a physics teacher who took me under his wing. Late in my junior year he asked me, “What do you want to do? What are your thoughts?” He gave me a lot of really good advice. He said to think about dentistry or optometry. I hadn’t really thought of those much. So, I researched, and I thought, this could actually work out very very well.
With the help of scholarships, I put myself through optometry school. During the summers I worked in a little beach resort town. Some acquaintances of my parents ran an amusement arcade, and I worked for them. They were like a second set of parents to me. They took three of us from families that were struggling under their wing. The gentleman was a huge role model for me because he had put himself through school too.
I had huge debt when I finished school and training, so it took a few years become financially stable. Overcoming that stress was probably the biggest obstacle for me. Those old habits die hard, and there’s still sometimes that fear of going back there. Thankfully it has been a while now. Optometry has worked out wonderfully. I really like it up here.”
– Pete Lapré, Grantham, NH
