Let me tell you about my education.
I didn’t go to kindergarten. I started first grade when I was almost six years old. I’ve been in school almost without stop for the forty years since.
I have roughly eleven million undergraduate credits. (Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But not by much!)
See, I used to live in this teeny tiny rural Nevada town. The teeny tiny rural community college there partnered with the University of Nevada to offer two undergraduate degrees. One in education and one in social work.
I got about 3/4 of the way through both of them.
Here’s what happens at the 3/4 mark: you have to do an internship.
Here’s what happened to me, twice: I panicked.
I didn’t want to be a classroom teacher OR a social worker.
I wanted to be a writer. So I found a low residency Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing at Goddard College and did two semesters of that.
Then we moved to Reno and I suddenly had access to a big fat state university. So I switched and started working toward a BA in English. Only some of my credits didn’t transfer over, so I had to take MORE courses.
So, I have a LOT of credits. Lots and lots and lots.
And no degree. For reasons.
A big reason is purely psychological. For my whole life being a school teacher has been my Plan B. If I can’t hack it as a writer, I’ll teach.
And if I have a degree? Well, I start to run out of reasons not to engage Plan B if Plan A isn’t feeding my kidlets. So, I just keep writing, and I don’t put myself in a situation where teaching in a classroom is a real option.
So I got within 9 credits of graduating and kind of stalled.
And then, about 18 months ago, I was offered something kind of special.
I was accepted into a Master of Fine Arts program. The school was starting a new concentration (Writing for Children and Young Adults) and I was a good fit–even without my undergraduate papers.
So, in January I’ll go to school for 8 days and start my fourth and final semester. As long as I get the work done, I’ll finish up and graduate with an MFA in August.
You know, as long as I don’t find a way to stall out at the finish line again.
I’ll write more about this some time soon, but I sold a book at the start of the last semester. So I don’t actually need my Plan B. That takes some of the self-impossed pressure off.
So, goal #1 for 2018 is to stay out of my own way and actually graduate.
So here are some action steps for meeting this goal:
- Show up to my residencies. (One in January to start my last semester, and the last one in August, where I’ll graduate.)
- Stay on top of my work. That means not waiting until the end of each month to get my packet work done. I’ll use my planner to help organize my time.
- Reach out to school friends when I’m feeling overwhelmed. (My instant response to school overwhelm is always: why am I doing this? I should drop out.)
- I have packets of work due once a month for the five months of the semester. I’ll work this week on coming up with some ideas for rewarding myself when I’ve turned them in.
P.S. Maybe when I’m done, I’ll see about those 9 credits and get my BA, too. Who knows.