My college diploma arrived in the mail. I know I should be happy, but I’m not. True, it’s an admirable achievement at my age, especially when my high school guidance counselor discouraged me from furthering my education at all, but still it is a bittersweet accomplishment.
I never understood why people in the education system, who should have been invested in the future of every student, put such cruel obstacles in my way. Several women in my family had and either didn’t take advantage of or lost the opportunity to attend college for various reasons. That did not qualify me any less. Any time I accomplished something, the elementary and high school faculty acted as if they were disappointed. I still remember an elementary school teacher telling me that I had been selected to participate in a high school creative writing seminar, with a look that condemned my daring to have any sort of talent.
When I first applied to college, starting with Rutgers evening classes, I only took one or two classes, hoping I could concentrate better on my studies in small quantities. I also didn’t want to appear to be somebody who craved being academically overloaded when I wasn’t a day person. I didn’t go for dorm life, but commuted from home at night and paid from my own pocket. After all those years of being told I was unfit, I decided to be fit on my own terms.
In the end I was able to get reimbursements for classes from work, and I still commuted 50 miles from the office to home at night, then got to school with two methods of public transportation (which didn’t get reimbursed).
With some breaks from academics while pursuing other aspects of life, it’s finally over. One class at a time, I cobbled together a four-year degree and finished it. I won’t march in commencement or hang the diploma on a wall as if I have to brag or say to anybody “I told you so,” mostly because all those faculty members who discouraged me are, for the most part, dead. They did their damage and escaped. That, above anything else, I think, is what made me hold back tears before I opened the envelope and read the Latin pronouncement that I had finished something nobody wanted me to even try. If those folks are indeed spirits out there somewhere, I wonder what they think now.
The news on the street is that a Bachelor’s degree is similar to the high school education of the 1970s. The other news on the street is that people with Master’s degrees are unemployed in huge numbers. Readers never are told who compiles this data, but I think it may come from people who have no or the wrong degree. But I did it, I earned it, and whatever becomes of the knowledge I’ve obtained, I won’t stop here. I like learning. How dare I.
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