It took a village to get me through school.
Now that I'm officially done with classes for my undergrad degree, I look back on the past seven years of my life and realize, I couldn't have done it alone and I didn't do it alone.
And it goes beyond just amazing professors. I made some good friends, friends who helped me write papers, who gave me books from their library that they thought would help me through a paper, who gave me books when they purchased two copies of just to give me one, friends who panicked with me when papers were due, or projects needed to be presented. My "career" at my university gave me a friend for life with Gabby, and that's something I'll be forever grateful for.
There's my mom too. I'm sure she was pretty frustrated that I put having a kid on hold to finish my degree she still made it a point to make sure I knew she was proud of me. She paid for all my books (my credit cards thank her for that) she paid for my graduation fee, she was there when I got inducted into honor society and I'm pretty sure it was her hands that were clapping the hardest for me.
It's funny, in my lit class we were reading "Everyman" and long story short its a play about a man who tries to get someone to die with him so he doesn't have to go alone, after death tells him that he is taking him. In the story, no one will go with Everyman, they all have an excuse. When my professor asked us if there was anyone we could think of that would step up and go with us, I told her that I had no doubt in my mind that if I asked my mom (in this hypothetical situation, I'm not talking about suicide pacts here guys...just read the play haha) she would go with me in a heartbeat. Its her devotion that reminds me I'm never alone. There were times when I wanted to just give up and walk away, but it was the idea of her being proud of me for completing this, and accomplishing this, that kept me going.
Then there's Dave. Quite frankly I'm not sure I would have even been in school if it hadn't been for him. We began dating November 7, 2006. By January 7, 2007 I was enrolled in my first class. He drove me to school the night before my first class and sat with me in the parking lot while I hyper ventilated. Every meltdown, every tear shed over a tough project, every twisted stomach over a presentation due, he was there. He hates reading, is bored by history, and could care less about literature, and yet is the first person to offer to read my 10+ page papers. When I'm stumped or have writers block, he is the one asking what its all about and then outlining my paper for me.
I don't know how I did it. I look at some of the crazy schedules I made for myself so I could work full time and still take three classes in the day and I wonder how I got through. Then I remember, I wasn't alone.
When I walk in May and when I get my degree between now and then, it's not MY degree. It's my friends'. It's my mom's. It's Dave's. It's the village's.
I leave you with this, it's one of my favorite lines from a poem that I adore. A poem I would have never read, never known about, never liked, had it not been for college:
