Story 6

Rock Star Professor or Loving Mother

Alejandra Estrin Dashe has worked for Anoka Ramsey Community College for about a year. She is a professor of Anthropology; teaching online, classroom and hybrid classes. Yet, amiss all the chaos of her career, she gave birth to a baby girl earlier this summer.

Dashe says, "Nothing wakes you up and puts you in a better mood than Gabriella; my daughter. Gabby is a ray of sunshine for this anti-morning person (me)." Dashe now has to learn how to balance her career with her daughter, along with rest of her family. Dashe said, "I’ve learned to be more organized and efficient at working." Even though the new addition to her family takes a great amount of time and has quite a few learning curves, "She means the world to me and everything I do is for her now," Dashe stated.

Dashe knew that she had to choose to have a career and have kids later, or to try and handle kids while finishing her schooling. "Many women have to choose and I chose to wait to have kids…. It was HARD," Dashe said, "I love being academic, but it was a huge trade-off for me. I also had to choose what kind of academic I wanted to be; A rock star professor…or just a teacher?" Having chose to wait for kids, Dashe put her career first and became a successful professor. Having a career already in place meant that she wouldn’t have to be searching for a job while trying to raise a new baby. It would be worth the wait to have everything in place for her future kids.

"Don’t have kids with some random person, because you are connected to that person forever if you have a kid with them," Dashe stated. Choosing her career first was a hard enough decision, but Dashe also had a rough time finding prince charming. Dashes’ prince charming would have to meet a few requirements, but before she met him "went through a lot of idiots" to find the right guy. "Falling in love with someone should be about personality not just beauty, because you don’t have your beauty when you’re 70 years old," Dashe acknowledged. When Dashe met the man who would become her husband, he had all the right qualities; "A Jewish man that had similar thinking and conversational style, political views and academic credentials," declared Dashe. Having a man that was alike her in many ways was important, she wanted to be good parents when the time eventually came. "It was hard to find the right person because of the alphabet soup I have after my name, because of my degrees. It freaks men out," laughed Dashe.

Having a daughter and being able to also teach as a professor means that Dashe is quite content with life. Smiling Dashe said, "When Gabby sees you, she smiles this big smile… and all you can do is just laugh along with her."