Okay, so most of you know that I graduated on May 15th. I haven’t talked about it yet because, well, I was busy tweeting about it. (I’d include the screenshots, but it was 11 days ago & half the world is graduating, so my tweets are long gone.) Anyhoo, the short of it: graduation sucked. I can’t even say I was excited about it. I spent the majority of the day laughing at other folks.
Case in point:
delia & her red picnic cup (i'll let you guess what's in it)
So yeah, I won’t repeat the details of how the ceremony started late and our keynote speaker, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, didn’t even stay for the full ceremony because she had “something to do” (yes, those were her words). I won’t even rant about how lackluster her speech was because, as she told us, “You won’t remember anything I tell you today.” O_o
If you follow me on Twitter or are a fan of my page on Facebook, you know that I live-tweeted my classes over the past two years. That means you know that this was one of my textbooks:
and that the professor who selected it for class is called “Prof Wiki” because he taught from Wikipedia for nearly half an hour. It means you also know about “Prof Gangsta”, who filled up my weekly two hours with pelvic thrusts, crotch-area pointing, and stories about how an ex-lover put a voodoo curse on him (to name a few things). You also know about how Dr. H was a constant source of frustration with his incessant group projects and how I secretly hearted Dr. P, even though I found myself angry at him more often than not.
For all it’s frustrations, I am absolutely disappointed that my grad school student loan balance looks like this:
add another $28K for undergrad...
And in case you’re wondering, no, I would not do this program over again. I will say, however, that I kind of like the University of Baltimore; most of the drama came from my having to deal with Coppin State University and the general lack of up-to-date systems between the two schools. Do I regret my experience? Hell no.
I’m the type of person who gleans lessons from every life experience, no matter how triflin’, disappointing, tragic, or otherwise ungood. The ultimate lesson I learned through my experience as a Human Services Administration student was this:
Stop taking myself, other people, and life in general so damned seriously.
Shit will happen and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. The best way to deal with shit happening is to try to be aware of how deep it’s gonna get and do your damnedest not to fight it. By following those two guidelines, you’ll keep things from getting unnecessarily messy. I think that lesson is perhaps more important than anything I could possibly have learned in the classroom. Dr. P would be proud.
There’s a lot more I could say, but I think I’ve covered the crux of it. I’m glad I got to share graduation day with three of the people who’ve inspired me to keep going. These folks are my family and I am forever grateful to them and all my Twamily for laughing with me, at me, and on my behalf. Our communal laughter and side eyes were definitely driving forces in my success.
And now, I get to move on to the next phases of my plan for world domination: earning a Ph.D. and using my research to empower homeless & unstably-housed youth to advocate for systemic change. Stick around for the next part of my journey; I’m sure it’s gonna be a wild ride of another kind!
Enjoy some more photos of my journey thus far!
