I must admit that I didn’t envision being a super senior when I was about to graduate from
high school.
I thought I would graduate, go to a four-year college and become a wedding planner, just like J. Lo in that movie with Matthew McConaughey. Only I would be no older than 22, of course.
Two transfers and major changes later, I realized that my picture-perfect plan is not always how the cookie crumbles. Furthermore, that’s okay.
I started out at a community college in my hometown to knock out some of those pesky general education classes.
Then I transferred to Wright State University to capitalize on my love and flair for the Spanish language and learn how to teach it. By January I had moved back home.
I didn’t consider it wasted time.
I learned something important when my roommate moved out: I am not happy or healthy living alone. I met my best friend there when we both auditioned for Collegiate Chorale. Neither of us made it, but it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I don’t even consider the time I spent back home to be wasted.
Some parents would be heartbroken to see their kids move back home well after they were supposed to have flown the coop, but not my parents.
I worked, applied to other schools and visited my sister, who was then at law school at
Ohio Northern.
I turned down a scholarship to study music education and sometimes I wonder how different my life would be had I accepted the offer.
That fall I came to BGSU to study Spanish Education. Weeks before boarding a plane to spend a year studying abroad in Spain, I cancelled the trip and changed my major.
Scared to death of school budget cuts, I decided to teach
Middle Childhood.
That’s where I am now, slated to graduate in May 2016 at a whopping, astonishing, nauseating almost 24 years of age.
I have friends who get nervous around the holidays because they’re sick of fielding questions from well-meaning relatives about just what they plan on doing with whatever degree.
I’m beginning to feel their pain.
It’s not that anyone asks me what I plan on doing with my teaching degree, but they do inquire with varying notes of judgment how I haven’t graduated yet and exactly when I plan on doing so.
It’s been wickedly hard watching friends my age and much younger graduate and start their “big people jobs”.
So every day, I make the choice to be content with my delayed
graduation date.
Instead of lamenting the fact that I officially have classes with people my little brother’s age, I like pointing them in the right direction when
they ask.
Many people ask me for advice. I’ve been through the hurdles of my major before lots of my classmates and I enjoy playing the expert.
I have learned the hard way not to compare myself to others my age. They have their own paths and I have mine.
How boring would it be, anyway, if we were all
the same?
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