Day 65

It has been exactly 65 days since I graduated from the University of Iowa with my Master’s Degree. During the last 65 days I went on vacation, edited work for my book, submitted a chapter for a book proposal, started my full time job, picked artwork for the cover of my book, and discovered more than I ever expected. While I was able to name so many great things that happened those were not the things that I focused on. Grad school ended in a way that I felt scarred me, but as time has passed I recognized that it has more so made me stronger. Sometimes it is hard to believe people who say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” - well I guess they were right. Unfortunately it took me about 63 of those days to realize how much I have grown. 

I wrote this blog post about thirty times and erased it thirty times - I wanted to blast the people that hurt me. I wanted to make them feel less than...just how they made me feel. But having the people who surround me as a support system helped me to choose otherwise. My emotions get the best of me and sometimes I am unsure of how to publicly respond. I sometimes want to break things and sometimes I just want to quit. But again it is my family, friends, mentors, students that keep me going. Now here I am on draft 31 and I am confident I will not delete this to start over.

While I did give a small space to let people know that there are people who have hurt me in grad school there are others who are great. Way to often I give light to the people who have caused me to dive deeper into a dark place instead of uplifting and shouting out the people who have brought light to the dark hole where I reside. 

So this is for my support system who deal with me and my bullshit. Who loves me beyond belief and who I love as well. Thank you for being such a great person and allowing me to use our time to learn from you. I never would have guessed that a masters degree would have my name on it - but the consistent love that I have received helped push me to the end. I would say that I worked hard to prove people wrong, but I more so worked hard to make my people proud of me. They always know I am capable of doing anything that I want. I may have yelled at you, ignored you, deleted you, blocked you, etc. But that was me allowing the naysayers around me to infiltrate and make me believe that there were others wanting to see me fail as well. I am sorry for not recognizing your support and love for me at all moments. I promise that I will continue to work hard on monitoring and controlling the issues that cause that. That means that I have to keep the negativity to the back and you all at the front. You are important to me and it was necessary for me to say that. 

I have started my career in a field that comes with so much - but I will continue to recognize how much the students make me smile, how much I adore colleagues and mentors, and how many people have changed my life. I am going to be good about recognizing people who matter because they deserve my attention. 

Lastly, I am not going to say names because the people that I wanted to recognize know their effect. I mean if you want confirmation feel free to ask me, LOL!!!! This is a solid reminder - I LOVE YOU