Acceptance letters. Flimsy, pieces of pressed wood pulp, usually with some fancy dancy pattern embossed on them, covered in fancy dancy acrylic lettering, they come in an envelope and sometimes even within their own individualized folders (wow! nice to see and get but I feel guilt for the student fees at work here) proclaiming to the world inside the head of the recipient.....
"You're a risk with a high success probability rate, we want you to pay us copious amounts of your hard-earned money so we can claim you as one of Ours!"
or
"I'm sorry, your probability of success at our institution has been deemed too low as to warrant expenditure of our valuable time and resources, we wish you formality-worded luck on your future endeavors and suggest that if you are determined, you apply similarly to an institution with lower standards".
I've gotten them both. I remember being directly out of high school and applying to colleges throughout the United States hoping against hope that I would get a "thick envelope". I did, I got a couple, I accepted one offer, and went bounding off to this grand old adventure of college. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and I bombed, spectacularly. Let it never be said that I haven't gone full head on into what I choose to do.
My problem was that high school was easy for me, and thus the reason I hardly tried. There were very few classes that were able to interest me enough that I wanted to try, in which I even bothered to do more than the bare minimum and yet, somehow, still get high grades. Needless to say when I graduated from a public Alaskan high school and dived into a full first-year's Pre-Medical course load at a true university....There was very little water in my pool, I hit my head rather hard.
One year later I ran away, escaping before they kicked me out, back to my hometown and the local university (more a community college actually, in much but name) to work, make some more desperate mistakes in my drive to discover who it was that I was and that I wanted to be, taking classes mainly because I didn't know how to go about life if I wasn't in school.
Today I am one and a half semesters away from graduating with my B.S. in Anthropology with a Minor in Psychology...when I do, I will have been out of high school and in college for 10.5 years.....solid. I have three certificates, one A.A.S, have had one career, finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up, and am getting the grades I should have been starting Day #1.
Somehow, the people I know are impressed with me. This is what I don't understand.
For some reason, they look at me, and see only the big things I've done, skim over the amount of time it has taken me to figure it all out and get to this point, and call me Smart!
For some reason....They think I'm edumacated.....
They have no idea how much further I have planned for myself to go. If I'm edumacated now...is there a term for what I will be when I get where I'm going?
