I'm an Alumni.

I suppose a great title for a blog about getting my degree would be "I spent 4 years and 100,000 and all I got was this piece of paper." But it sure is a glorious piece of paper:


I may have done it 3 months behind schedule...but I did it. I actually did it.

For a while I didn't think I could. I wanted to give up and forget that the last four years had ever happened. man. There were a tough four years. The toughest of my life.


Freshman year I entered Belmont University and the Honors program.

Over that year my two best friends in the world decided that they didn't want me to be a part of their lives anymore.

Spring semester freshman year Grandfather on my mother's side had his first severe onset of dementia while staying with my family, and thought my parents were strangers holding him hostage. He tried a couple of times to physically attack my mother. He was diagnosed with lewy bodies.

That summer I got a part time job at Lowe's and one of my uncles on my mother's side moved in with us. He stayed here to work while we went to spend Christmas with my dad's family in Mississippi. We got a call Christmas day saying he was in the hospital, had been found wandering the streets of our town after some sort of mental breakdown at work. We rushed home, he was put in a mental institution for a couple of weeks, and is currently in an assisted living apartment complex.

The next spring my grandmother on my mom's side developed a non-cancerous, inoperable tumor on her liver.

I was selected to be an RA in the Honors house for my Junior year. all Junior year I carried a 17hour class load while working 15 hours each weekend at Lowe's, working 20+ hours a week as an RA, plus extra time spent in meetings, inservices, and planning programs.

My grandmother's tumor kept growing and using up more of her blood supply til she had to have weekly blood transfusions. She decided she no longer wanted the transfusions, and died during the lead up to finals fall semester my Junior year.


I left the day after the first Christmas without my grandmother for a 2 week study abroad trip to London, which came back 2 days after I was supposed to be back to campus to get RA and school stuff underway.

Finals time spring semester Junior year my grandfather died.


I left the day after RA stuff ended for a 2 week study abroad trip to South Africa/Botswana.

I came back to full time hours at Lowe's and papers to write from my study abroad trip.

I burnt out.

I sank deeper and deeper into the depression that I've flirted with since middle school.

Research and preparations I was supposed to be making to write my senior honors thesis went undone.

I put in my 2 weeks notice at Lowe's, only to be rear-ended, given whip-lash and having to quit before those two weeks were up.

Fall semester Senior year I went to see a school counselor. After our first meeting she sent me to a psychiatrist's office for a "medication assessment." I was put on prozac.

I gained 30lbs.

Spring semester I took myself off Prozac.

I had to face the fact that I wasn't going to graduate in May, and if i didn't get myself together and focus I wasn't going to graduate in August either. I wanted to quit. I wanted to give up and forget getting a stupid degree.

A lot of times over those 4 years I wanted to die.

Sometimes I think my mother is the only reason I did it. Sometimes I think she's the only reason I'm still here at all. Cause after everything she has been through, all the heartbreak and loss she has been through over these 4 years, I couldn't be another loss. I couldn't be another disappointment. She means the world to me. She's never given up on me. Always reminded me that God has a plan, and that "this too will pass." Always held me while I cried uncontrollably and for no rational reason. Always sent money, text messages, and care packages at exactly the right time.



She's my hero.

And I definitely do not tell her that often enough.