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Today is the day that I submitted my very last college paper to be over-analyzed by a professor I have never directly talked to. As a matter of fact, I haven’t had one conversation with a professor other than an email exchange with one who “forgot” to grade my paper. Her forgetfulness defaulted my paper with an F… High school me wouldn’t have cared less but adult – in a lot of student loan debt – me cared A LOT.

I haven’t really told anyone that I’m done with school because it doesn’t feel that triumphant to me. It’s quiet and familiar. When I left regular high school and started at a continuation school, it removed the feeling of peer success and accomplishment most felt when graduating with their class. The end of my high school experience involved independent study with a once a week, two hour check-in in an offsite trailer. The lady was very nice and made finishing high school very easy for me; easy enough to graduate early. I did have the option to walk with my graduating class at the main school but, I chose not to. I was too far removed from all those people and walking meant nothing to me.

Starting college at 27 wasn’t a difficult decision because I wanted more for myself. Education wasn’t made important to me when I was growing up. I didn’t take all the fancy testing for colleges or work with guidance counselors to choose the top schools to apply to. All I knew is the faster I finished school, the faster I can close that door and move the fuck on.

College wasn’t an option at that time. My only option was to work to survive or barely make it out of whatever slump I was in. Financial security was something I have never known and never expected to know. All too familiar was living paycheck to paycheck, being frugal as hell, and always expecting to be in the red until I was paid again.

Once I was done with high school, I found myself back to a starting point. I’ve since learned that I don’t like being at starting points and often panic into something that will keep me busy. So, seemingly overnight, I decided to go to Cosmetology school then Barber school. Somehow, the idea of me going to traditional college full-time was out of the question. But, full-time beauty school wasn’t? Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm. Before school, I worked at a dog kennel at the ass-crack of dawn and in the freezing cold. I would leave covered in slobber and hair just to get covered in different kinds of nonsense and more hair. After playing with chemicals and mannequin heads all day, I drove all the way out to the coast to work as a hostess in hotel restaurant until about 10pm. The only perk with this job was free dinner!

I graduated beauty school just to start over in Barber school. Barber school was done. Now what? Find a job doing hair. Fortunately – and later unfortunately – for me, I found a job that let me mess up a few haircuts and build experience to move on up into the decade long career I had barbering. Enter burnout.

Now what – again? My resume was very specialized and didn’t offer too much to any other career avenues. Except for the ability to talk to every type of person, I was just an underpaid and unlicensed therapist. Barbering showed me exactly who I DIDN’T want to work with so I let my curiosity choose my next career: Prison – a story for another day.

Thanks to modern technology and COVID, online school was available – and often on an ongoing basis – so I started somewhat immediately. I took more classes than I probably should have at once and finished a year earlier than projected – today. I now feel the same way I did when I finished high school; quiet and essentially incomplete. Only this time, I’m in way more debt. I do believe that a large part of my muted feelings about graduating was, like high school, wasn’t in a traditional school setting where I had the peer experience and now get to walk across a stage to share the grand success and combined relief.

This college isn’t the greatest university and wasn’t hard to get into at all. Part of me regrets going but the majority of me is pretty excited to say that I stuck it out. It was challenging and I learned a lot. The course work and the bones of the degree was informative and grasped me enough not to drop-out. With online learning, I really had to figure out how to stay disciplined and self-motivated. While I had deadlines, what I did in those deadlines was up to me. Procrastination and I are homies. But, we all know that some homies aren’t good for us.

And for the third time in this post – now what? I should basque in my successes, enjoy not having homework, and read anything other than a textbook or peer-reviewed article. I will do all of those things but only for two and half months because I start graduate school in August. Oops.

E

*EDIT 8/31 – Life has a funny way of changing things by the second. Surely, within a blink of an eye, my plans of graduate school shifted dramatically and I couldn’t be more relieved.