She's Dr. Marijuana Pepsi to you

[Shrek]

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/columnists/jim-stingl/2019/06/18/stingl-her-name-marijuana-pepsi-and-she-just-got-her-doctorate/1477709001/

I first wrote about this remarkable woman 10 years ago after she earned her master's in higher education administration and was teaching in Beloit where she grew up. The article went viral and Marijuana still has strangers saying to her, "I've heard of you!"

Last month, after eight years of studying and commuting, she scored a Ph.D. in higher education leadership from Cardinal Stritch University here in the Milwaukee area. So it seemed like a good time to catch up with Dr. Marijuana, which she admits sounds a bit like a weed dispensary.

[hunter]

1. A name people won't forget.

It could have gone either way, she chose to embrace it. She could have chosen invisibility.

In my family culture you can go by any name you like, even as a child, even on a fleeting whim.

I think it's just a matter of respect to call people what they choose to be called.

One of our kids was Hercules for a while.

But it used to confuse the hell out of me when cousins we rarely saw would reappear years later with different names.

My grandparents chose not to go by the names their parents gave them.

When I was teaching I saw all sorts of names. Children usually wanted to go by their official names, as printed in the roll book, but not always. How to pronounce names is another issue. That's something you deal with on the first day of school.

When I was in school, back in the dark ages, I remember a few stern teachers who rejected all "foreign" or "hippy" names, teachers who would come up with some Anglicized name and force it upon a child. To them the U.S.A. was a melting pot and by God, you would be rendered. They most certainly would have called Dr. Marijuana Pepsi "Mary" in their classrooms and refused any argument.