class of 2008

it's rare that i use this blog to share the significant details of my life. it is more of an anonymous rant space for me than an actual day by day commentary on life in my little world. but today i am so delighted about current events in my universe, i just want to share them all.

in the interest of full disclosure, let me take you back to march-ish of the year 2000. i was about to graduate from college and had been considering graduate schools since the previous fall. being only minimally motivated, as i tend to be, i had decided that i only really wanted one school. i wanted to attend union theological seminary in the city of new york and if i couldn't do that.... well, i would decide on an alternative route should i need to. sometime in march of 2000, i received word from union seminary that if i should so choose, they were willing to allow me to attend their school. fools! i was ecstatic! the only graduate school i wanted... a fairly competitive school by academic standards... and they were willing to take me. i sent the matriculation card to the registrar before the ink was dry and then kind of panicked. i was going to move to new york city. i had never been, but always wanted to go. i was going to attend the school which housed all of my academic heroes. surely they would think i was an idiot. it was an experiment in baby steps to actually get my confidence-challenged self to union.

i can't possibly be a student at union seminary!!! but i can pack all the shit in my house into boxes. and i can put address labels on those boxes, bearing my new address at west 122nd street. and i can book a plane ticket to new york.... by august of that year i was enrolled, living at 600 west 122nd street, and fully ready to explore the greatest city in the US. i even went to class and did reasonably well.

for reasons known and unknown, in and outside of my control, i completed the coursework at union seminary by december of 2002 and moved all my belongings back to the midwest in a pull-behind u-haul. then life just kind of got in the way of finishing the degree that at one time was more important to me than anything i had ever done.

2003 came and went, i still spoke of finishing. was still working out a precise thesis topic.

2004 came and went, i avoided conversations about my educational history.

2005-- i had lost the ability to discuss ever having lived in NYC-- too ashamed of the unfinished degree.

2006-- i had almost forgotten that i ever went to grad school, i didn't know how to talk about the academic pursuits that used to dominate my conversations... i couldn't say the words 'union theological seminary'.

2007-- a chance meeting between a very dear friend and a Union faculty member, also a dear friend, in Atlanta, GA started the conversation again. one of them emailed me. the other asked me over a post-basketball game drink 'what are you going to do about this master's degree?' a third acquaintance (who happens to have attended Union) got involved in the conversation and pushed me to do something about the unresolved internal conflict this whole issue was causing me.

i contacted union and learned that my option for completion had expired in 2004.

no one was satisfied with this answer and encouraged me to assert myself in ways i never had before. i contacted the dean... series of emails, letters, faxes... they agreed to allow me to enroll and complete the thesis requirement. grace.

that was last june. months went by as i contemplated thesis topics, ideas, directions.... i bumbled around aimlessly, worried that i would bail on the whole project again...

yesterday at 4:26 pm i finished my master's thesis. i brought it to kinko's to be bound and at 12:30 this afternoon i will mail it to the registrar at union theological seminary and on may 16, 2008, i will receive my MA degree, probably in absentia, but i will receive it nonetheless.

it was a long and kind of embarrassing journey, but i haven't been this excited since the day i received the acceptance letter.

life is good.