Alma Matter

My memory of national school in Lispole, Dingle, Co Kerry, is that it was a lovely environment. We were surrounded by beauty and were constantly aware of the changing seasons. My mother came from the fiorGhaeltacht - she grew up in the same area as Peig Sayers, Muiris O Suilleabhain and Tomas O Criomhthain. These people, who wrote and told stories, were very real to us and provided us with a vital link between school and home.

There was no sense in which school was an alien place. I particularly enjoyed national school. At home we mainly spoke Irish and at school we were taught through Irish. It's much more widely spoken in Dingle now than it was when I was growing up. I think at that time it was still regarded as an inferior language. If you spoke in Irish in the town you were regarded as being uneducated.

For second level, I went to the Presentation Sisters in Dingle, which was about three miles away from my home. I used to cycle to school - for me, acquiring a bicycle was a glorious liberation!

By this time, my three older sisters had all but left home - one was at boarding school, one was training to be a nurse and the other was in teacher training. My parents wanted us all to do well. They believed that education was the way to achieve in Irish society and my mother, in particular, believed that girls should have professions.

She had gone to the United States when she was young and had trained as a chef. She worked there for eight years and then came home and married my father. She saw the value of education and had very definite plans for us. As a result we were all keen to succeed in school.

I liked secondary school well enough, but it was a very different to national school. I was immediately aware that not everyone was able to avail of a second-level education. Going into Dingle every day meant that I saw the differences between people who had something and people who had nothing.

By the time I was coming to the end of my school life, I was beginning to realise that I didn't want to become either a teacher or a nurse - which seemed to be the only careers open to women at that time. Unfortunately, there were no social work degrees and I wanted to work with the poor. I stumbled on the Irish Sisters of Charity through one of my sister's friends who was joining the order. She told me that their focus was working with the poor. I travelled to Dublin to meet them and, once I did so, I knew that that kind of work was what I wanted. I wasn't the type of person to become a sister in a convent. I didn't want a secluded life.

I surprised a lot of people when I announced that I was going to join the order. I wasn't regarded as being particularly religious. It was only once I had entered, that I discovered the spiritual life which has enabled me to do my work. I now know that I was answering God's call. If He had simply asked me to become a nun, I wouldn't have done so.

Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, president of Focus Ireland, a national voluntary body to alleviate and prevent homelessness, is the author of Now is the Time (Townhouse £9.99). She was in conversation with Yvonne Healy.