Kristy Kelly: Navigating without a degree
My son is going to get his associates degree from LCC later this year. I’m so proud of his accomplishments and how hard he’s worked at finishing the course. It wasn’t easy, for either of us. As he’s my youngest, his impending graduation has left me feeling out of sorts. Incomplete.
I’m a little jealous of his ability to finish. It's something I was never able to do.. I graduated high school with my two year old in attendance. With three more kids in five years, college wasn’t something that worked out for me. I tried it once. It went poorly and left me with nothing but $25,000 in debt that kept me in poverty.
I’ve heard of women going back to college after their kids are grown and I’m in awe of their commitment to bettering themselves. I’ve taken countless online courses over the years for different skills I wanted to learn, but the idea of going back to school, even online, isn’t one I’ll entertain. It was a $25,000 lesson I’d already learned.
There is still a part of me that feels inept because I don’t have a degree on my wall. When I started writing local news, I felt like the biggest fraud in the world because I had no idea what I was doing. Writing has always come easy to me, I’m a natural storyteller but there is no accountability with storytelling. Someone calling you, mad as fire, because you got something they said wrong? Bam! Instant accountability.
It only took a few times of that happening before I learned different tools of the trade that put me on a more successful path. It’s not a lack of knowledge, but a perceived validity that’s missing from my resume. How can I expect people, professional people, to take me seriously on just my words and my wit? Time was the best teacher for local news.
Perhaps one day I’ll go back to school and get a degree. The unrealistic expense alone is enough for me to be fairly confident I won’t, but it’s a thought that stays in the back of my head. Not because I feel like I need a degree to be successful in what I’m doing, but because I think other people have that expectation.
Instead of accepting that I’d achieved in writing what many writers never will, I negate my own successes. It doesn’t matter how many books I've published, or how many news articles I’ve written, not having a degree still feels like a flaw. I just have to remind myself Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg never finished college either.
For now, I’ll watch my son walk across that stage, and cheer for him in only the way an obnoxious mother can, while secretly wishing I was walking beside him.
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