Bam! Marks from the last semester finished trickling in sometime in the past few days. Upon my last inquiry I had finally received the last grade for the last of my courses to be completed. That means I’m actually done. Bam! a few more illuminated pixels on the computer monitor and it’s now over.
Plenty of people have been asking me how it feels to be done and really it’s even more anti-climactic that you might first guess. No-one expects you to say “finishing my degree changed my life” but I’d guess that the question is supposed to have an answer there seems to be an expectation that finishing school is a turning point in life, really it wasn’t at all. Getting the Iron ring and making a pledge to pursue a career with professionalism did give a little dose of perspective change.
Why not? I don’t think it’s because I’m returning to Grad School. While that in some sense does make a difference regarding whether or not I see the end of a BSc as the actual end of school I think it’s mostly due to another reason. It’s because I’ve worked hard at putting school way down the totem pole of important things in life. Obviously I haven’t removed it from that hierarchy, because I did still bust my ass hard enough to keep the grades essentially flawless. I have however done a better job recently, especially the last 16 months or so, of putting many more important things first. School doesn’t even make the top 5 anymore: That is success.