I left work a couple hours early Thursday afternoon to visit the University of Oklahoma and submit the final paperwork required for graduation.
Perhaps its from years of dealing with computers, but I prefer things to be linear and, if at all possible, chronological. Purchasing a cap and gown two months before I defend my final project almost seems presumptuous on my part. I realize graduation is a massive undertaking that involves hundreds (thousands?) of students and must take a long time to coordinate, but preparing for graduation before turning my final project in almost feels like showing up to an interview wearing a company’s uniform.
It was the summer of 2015 when Susan discovered OU’s Professional Writing program. Prior to finding that program I had no intention of going back to school. Master’s Degrees are expensive, and this one in particular wouldn’t have any impact on my current job. But the more we dug into the details of the program, the more excited I got. This program teaches writers how to take ideas and turn them into finished products, and it spoke directly to me.
That fall I enrolled in Short Story class, and the rest is (almost) history. The funny thing is, I enrolled in that class even before I had been accepted into the university’s graduate program. Talk about putting the cart before the horse! In the end that class didn’t even count toward my degree, but I’m so glad I took it. It plopped me into a room full of students already in the program and showed me I could hang. With that tiny sip of confidence, I was ready to charge ahead full steam forward, and have been doing so ever since.
I’m sure I’ll be writing more about school as the final date comes and goes, but I’ll tell you something interesting. Almost every time I’ve graduated from something, be it a college or even a training course, I always felt like something was coming to an end. This time, it feels like something is about to start.