I graduated high school in May of 2004.
Almost five years later I’m not even close to holding a college degree in my hot sweaty hand. At first I feel a little pathetic, when so many of my high school comrades are now certified teachers, accountants, nutritionists, nurses, dental hygienists, occupational therapists, and marine biologists.
**Side note: It’s not my lack of degree that leaves me feeling pathetic; it’s my lack of degree in a timely manner. I don’t judge anyone who has not gone to college. Heck, I don’t even want to go to college. However, since I do want a degree, it seems ridiculous that it’s taking me so long to get one. It’s self-loathing, people. I only judge my own person.**
So it is with a certain amount of self-deprecation that I announce on my website…I am on the 10 Year Plan of university graduation.
Not really the 10 Year Plan. From May of 2004, it will be probably be a 7 Year Plan, but the 10 Year Plan sounds so much more mournful. At any rate (a slow rate in my case), I will be done with school sometime, and that’s the point. And before I get too depressed by thinking of all I haven’t done with my life to date, I should tell you what I have done:
Moved to Canada one month before my 19th birthday, a year into my college experience. I transferred my first year credits from ASU up to a local college in Alberta, and continued taking my general requirement courses.
Met Poor Kyle while continuing my second year of university.
Moved back to Arizona in April of 2006, done with two years of college. I spent that summer basically carefree with friends and family, still dating Poor Kyle (albeit long-distance) and trying to sort out myself.
Started back at ASU in fall of 2006, having decided against returning to Canada for school. Finally settled on Art History/Museum Studies as my major. Image from here.
Got engaged to Poor Kyle and immediately decided I was too young to get married. Finished the Fall ’06 semester at ASU and fancied myself a French speaker. Started looking into study abroad programs for the next semester, so I could get married the next fall with the knowledge I’d seen the world and would not regret becoming a wife so soon in life.
Decided study abroad was a waste of money, and signed up to be a nanny. Why pay to live in Europe, when getting paid to live there was so much more fun? Took two classes online from ASU while living in Belgium. Me and Manneken Pis, chillin’ like a couple villains. Man, I miss that continent.
Those were the last classes on my official college transcripts; the next three semesters have been spent…
…getting hitched…
…honeymooning…
…and doing basically anything else that sounds like fun, including spelling out our names with pretzels.
But now the good times are over. I’m back to school today, and it’s the end of my married life as I’ve known it. Poor Kyle will no longer have home-cooked meals on the table when he comes home from work, because I’ll still be in my night class. There will be a lot less cuddling ’round these parts, because when I’m not writing for school I’ll be writing for this website, and after the mental strain of all the thinking, I’ll basically crash every night. Thinking’s not my forte. Poor, poor Poor Kyle.
And poor me, because I’m the one who has to take these classes for another couple of years.
How very dreadful. This had better be worth it, or I’ll be really mad.
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