Debra Key of Columbus has a plan, and she”s “particular” about its details. She likes her facts in A-B-C order; she likes structure; she likes things that have rules and make sense. And she likes …
“Paperwork, I love paperwork! When I was a child, I asked for a typewriter one Christmas,” Key said.
“I like researching and organizing my information, amassing it into a document and then filing it in its proper place so that you can find it the next time you need it.”
Key is one of about 250 academic, career-technical and vocational students who graduated Friday from East Mississippi Community College during commencement ceremonies at the Golden Triangle campus. Thirty-eight years old and a mother of four, Key graduated as an academic student from the college”s Columbus Air Force Base branch.
“It had been so long since I was in school, I wanted to make the right choice,” Key said. “EMCC was close to home. It”s less expensive and the classes are smaller. I didn”t want to take the chance of being just a number on a larger campus.”
The term “non-traditional student” means less at a place like EMCC, which works with people of all ages and life experience.
Key joined the U.S. Army when she was 17 years old. The Army taught her how to cook for crowds at a military base in New Jersey. Key”s first duty station was Wurzberg, Germany, and she spent one tour in Colorado Springs. After the Army, Debra Key came home to Columbus and took a job in the food service industry. She married Cornelius Key in 1995.
“I said I would go to college when my youngest child was old enough to go to school,” Key said.
Key”s long-term goal is to become a lawyer.
With her associate”s degree from EMCC in hand, Debra Key is looking to take the next step, the paralegal program at Mississippi University for Women.
Key caught the bug for the law at Colom Law Firm in Columbus, where she interned and later worked as a legal aid.
“I did research on different topics that came up in the cases, and I helped put exhibits together for court,” Key said. “Mr. Colom was very specific about how he wanted the exhibits to look. He wanted the type in a chart to be a certain size and the columns to be an exact width.”
After graduating from MUW, Key wants to go to law school at Ole Miss.
In the meantime, you might see Debra Key if you check into a hotel in Columbus. She works as a desk clerk to help pay the bills. And when things get quiet, she puts her head in a book.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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