A Perpetual Achievement
Posted by Sharon Cece on May 8th, 2009
There are many things you can lose. You can lose your keys, you can lose an argument, you can lose weight and at times you can lose your way. One thing you can never lose is your education. From the moment you flip that little tassel to the other side, you own it forever. It’s called a lifetime achievement.
There are few things in my life that I aspired to that were and are truly important to me, few things that I sought after with clear conviction. Finding a lifetime marriage partner was one of those few–having children was also (even though I didn’t realize how much until it actually happened). My faith is something I‘m continually and deeply seeking, time spent with family and friends are constant, essential goals; simple things I crave, such as one perfectly decorated truffle in a candy store window. Never material goods, not even a career necessarily.
But my degree–now, getting my degree was exceptionally important to me, one of those very few things I sought after for so many years, even after I thought I had given up. Maybe because I realized it was one of the few things that couldn’t be taken away; it presented itself as a solid testimony to my unusually steadfast commitment to a singular goal.
I honestly thought that once I was finally finished–when that very last course was at long last complete and that last click was clicked, when I could jump up and yell my FSU Seminole yell “YAYYYYYYYY I’m DONE FINISHED YAYAYAYAYA!”, that yell would be the big moment and, other than the pomp of commencement, it all would nicely fade away into a soft, happy memory. But the glow of achievement has not diminished after three years and I wonder if it will ever. It may be that because my journey to college graduation was so long (21 years) and so impatiently awaited that it may take longer to shelve it under “just another goal met“. But I don’t think so. When I think about, wow, the menagerie of courses (four different universities contributed), how grueling it was working two, sometimes three jobs; how I attended first as a young student, and then as a young married student, then an older student with children, about all the transitions I endured and how I brought those transitions into my essays and my exchanges, and how I evolved on so many levels, I honestly don’t believe the joy, the sweet sensation of reaching the mountain’s steep and lofty pinnacle, will ever recede.
The fact that I finished my degree online only added to it’s allure, gave my degree more color and depth. My degree, or rather my journey to my degree, metamorphosed so many times throughout the years that the journey took on a life of it’s own, to finish in a way completely different from how I started but no less satisfying. In fact, the online aspect was the final piece in my multifaceted academic puzzle. The online ingredient expanded my university well-roundedness; I can relate, now, both to students on campus and students online. That’s pretty cool.
As anyone who’s read even one of my posts knows, my online degree has given me so much more than an education, it‘s given me a perpetual feeling. How to describe that feeling… do you know that sweet sensation when you’ve just finished cleaning your house, the whole entire house, and you finally sink into your couch “Ahhhh” and look around at your beautiful sparkling home and simply relish in all the hard work you did? Or, when you’ve just finished a huge project–one that has been challenging and overwhelming, the one you thought you’d never get done–when you put the finishing touches on it and step back to look at it, that feeling? Or when you’ve finished baking a huge, I do mean humongous, Thanksgiving dinner for 25 people and you’ve slaved and worked and sweated (and worried quite a bit), dealt with the many snags and snafus, but when everything’s finally done and on the table you look at this glorious feast and think, wow it’s amazing. I really did it.
Magnify that a hundred-fold, and that’s the feeling you’ll have from getting your degree. Except it doesn’t need to be cleaned over and over, or redone and revised, or reduced from a feast to crumbs you scrape off a dinner plate. That feeling, that achievement, is here to stay. And no matter what you do with your degree, whether you get a more qualified job or higher pay, go on to get another degree, or simply enjoy the sense of accomplishment it brings, you will have added a grand chapter to your life book, the chapter entitled, “Amazing, I Really Did It”.
