Graduating with Honors: Kappa Tau Alpha

In the fall of 1991, three months after graduating high school, I walked into Redlands Community College. I walked out two years later with no degree and a 3.25 grade point average. After another year at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, I still hadn’t graduated and my GPA had dropped to 3.10 after pulling a 2.75 there. As much as I enjoyed journalism, there was zero chance of me being nominated for any sort of honor society based on my academic achievements (or lack thereof).

It took me a few years to get my head on straight. In the fall of 1999 through the spring of 2000, I completed 16 credit hours at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC), enough to finish my AA in Journalism and Broadcasting. Equally as important (to me) was that my GPA at OCCC was 4.0. Sure, my cumulative was only a 3.3, but a change had definitely taken place.

For some reason I thought (or, perhaps, hoped) that my past college sins would be forgiven when I enrolled at Southern Nazarene University (SNU) to work on my BA, but that was not the case. All those classes I blew off more than a decade prior followed me there. I began work on my BA at SNU in the spring of 2003, and graduated in the spring of 2005. During that time I maintained a 4.0 GPA — straight A’s for two years. I thought that’s the GPA I would graduate with, but those old grades came back to haunt me. When I graduated from SNU, my cumulative GPA was 3.485, which rounded to 3.5 — good enough to graduate Cum Laude, but not the 4.0 I was hoping for.

After a refreshing ten-year break, I enrolled in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 2015. I read that maintaining a 4.0 average in grad school can be tough for full-time students, and even more difficult for adult students such as myself, with full time jobs and families. Some people claim that grades in grad school aren’t as important as the lessons and skills you learn. I’m guessing whoever said that didn’t have a Type A personality. I wanted to learn all the lessons and skills, and maintain a 4.0 while doing it.

Which I did.

Last week I was nominated to join Kappa Tau Alpha, the national honor society that “recognizes academic excellence and promotes scholarship in journalism and mass communication.” According to their website, “[m]embership must be earned by excellence in academic work at one of the colleges and universities that have chapters. Selection for membership is a mark of highest distinction and honor.” This isn’t one of those hokey generic honor societies that will accept anyone who pays $100 to appear in their yearly book of “people we tricked into paying $100 to appear in this book.” It’s the real deal, and I’m taking a moment to pat myself on the back over it.

No, I don’t think grades are more important than lessons learned, and in some cases, I don’t even think grades are a good indicator of whether or not any learning took place. In my case, my GPA reflects the amount of time and effort I put into this program. I spent my first year of graduate school catching up with students who already knew the campus, the professors, the software, and so on. The grades I earned only partially convey some of the sacrifices I made; the early morning and late night writing sessions; the lunches I spent sitting in my car, eating tacos and reading books about writing; and the 80-mile (round trip) treks to and from school, up to three times a week. There were weeks I traveled for work and wrote short stories while holed up in a hotel room. Then there was “the semester from hell,” where one day a week I woke up at 5 a.m., began work at 6 a.m., drove from work to school at 2:30 p.m., attended class until 9 p.m, and returned home around 10:30 p.m.

There were a few times I was tempted to skimp on assignments. A couple of semesters ago I had to write a series of reports based on some scientific articles that were pretty difficult to get through, much less comprehend. The assignments came during a period when I was really busy at work, and I was having a hard time finding time to focus on reading those articles and writing the reports. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider skipping the assignment, but that was the younger me talking. I trudged through the assignment, spending more time than it deserved and I had to spend. The time and effort paid off.

In a couple of weeks when I graduate from college (most likely for the last time ever), I’ll be doing so with honors and a Kappa Tau Alpha cord around my neck. In the big scheme of things it may not mean much, but it means something to me.