My college graduation story: ‘YOU GO GIRL’

It took me 27 years to get my undergraduate degree in English Literature – 27 years! It’s fair to say something went terribly wrong along the way.

In fact, a lot of things went wrong but it wasn’t dramatic life events that kept me from succeeding. My biggest stumbling block was a mindset.

You see – no matter how much I wanted to see myself as an educated, accomplished woman of the world – when I looked in the mirror what I saw was an abused girl; a high-school drop out; a teen mother and, later, a divorced, single mother with no education, no skills and no money.

I lived every day in survival mode. Any worthwhile thing I accomplished,  I accomplished in the name of my daughters.They deserved to be protected. They deserved to be educated and to see the world.

I fought hard for them but when it came to me I was half-hearted because my mindset kept telling me that I just wasn’t worth the effort.

So dozens of false starts and failed attempts later I found myself, in the fall of 2010, looking at my degree progress report for the millionth time when it hit me that I was only nine credits away from graduating. I was only nine credits away from erasing the stigma of “dropout” from my psyche forever.

I was trembling with excitement and fear as I signed up for those last three classes. Eighteenth Century British Literature, Computer Concepts and College Level Math.

The problem was that they don’t let you just take a college level math class and pass or fail based on performance. You have to take a test to determine if you are ready for it first. I hadn’t taken any math since the eighth grade and I’m pretty sure I was high when I took that.

The test I took determined that I needed to take three prerequisite classes before I would qualify to take the one three credit course I needed to graduate. Of course, I couldn’t take them all at once. I had to take them consecutively, which means that I would have to be in school another year and spend another $8,000 to get those three credits. It wasn’t worth it and, once again, I dropped out.

That’s when I heard about the C.L.E.P. test. It’s a test where, if you pass it, you get credit for the class. The test covered Algebra, Trigonometry, Probability and Statistics, Calculus, Geometry and more.

My advisor told me I could attempt the test two times. If I couldn’t pass it then I would have to take the courses. I decided I would take the test right away to get a feel for it, and then I would study for a few months and take it again to pass.

Apparently, I had gained some level of confidence along the way.

But the test made no sense to me. I mean I didn’t even understand the instructions. Math was  more of a foreign language to me than Japanese. I realized I had a very difficult task ahead of me so I sharpened my pencil and started to learn.

My daughter tutored me for the first few weeks. She laughed when I said things like, “How can I solve this if I don’t know what X is?” But soon she was impressed with Mommy and her math lingo.

I worked very hard. I wrote a narrative to help me understand the indicators of graphing. I made up songs about the difference between standard deviation and a quadratic equation.

If you saw me with a crowd at a pub, huddled over a table, the chances were good that we were working on some problem or another.

My friends gave me books and cheered me on all the way.

I hired a tutor who kept telling me how impressed he was with how quickly I was getting the concepts. It turns out that my mind is mathematically inclined.

I got so sure of myself that I signed up for my graduation on May 20 and I posted the event on Facebook. It was official. I was going to graduate!

Hundreds of messages came in – YOU GO GIRL!!!

Then I signed up for the Math test …on May 19^th.

On the 18^th of May I sat down for a practice test. I set everything up like it was the real thing. I timed it and everything.

Now, I’m not going to say I failed that practice test because that would underemphasize how terribly I did. I bombed. I couldn’t finish in time and more than half of what I did was wrong.

My tutor said, “I don’t understand – you know this stuff.”  Then he reassured me that I could always take the test again if I failed but that was not my understanding. I told him that my advisor told me it was two times or take the classes.

That’s when my tutor said something he had never said before. “Don’t take the test.”

I could feel my confidence sift out of me like air from a hole in a balloon.  I insisted I had to – I was scheduled to graduate the next day.  He begged me to put it off for a few more months. He offered to help me get there and, if I couldn’t afford it he would work with me for free.

That’s how sure he was that I was going to fail.

My daughter already had booked her flight from Florida to see me graduate.  Celebration plans were already set up. I had been so public about my graduation that my failure would be prominently visible. I was sick.

My daughter Katie told me that lots of students walk the stage with a few credits left to accomplish but after so many years of struggle I wanted my graduation to be 100 percent real.

I was heartbroken.  I cried myself to sleep that night.

I woke up to the sound of a courier knocking on my door. He delivered a package from my friend who wrote me a long and beautiful letter about how proud she was of me. I sat down on the floor and sobbed.

The next knock was from another friend who came to give me a hug for luck. She found me mid-meltdown and she went to work on me right away to prop me back up.

Over the course of our dramatic conversation we discovered that my heartache was not that I would disappoint everyone who was watching, though that did weigh heavily. My heartache was that I would not be able to shed the “drop out” from my self-image.

We determined that “failure” would be better than “quitter” so I decided to get down to the test station and take that test for better or worse.

By this point I was already late for the start time and the test site was an hour away. I raced out the door.

About a mile down the road I realized that I forgot to bring my graduation passes that I was supposed to deliver to my daughter after I took the test.

I allowed myself the thought that, since I was going to fail, I didn’t need to get the tickets to her. That thought made me stop the car.

If I was going to take this test, I decided, then I was going to INTEND to pass it.

I went back for the tickets and the whole way down to the University of Maryland I chanted to myself, “It is my intention to pass this test.”

I got there 40 minutes late but there was still time. I filled out the registration papers and pulled out my $75.00 cash. I brought cash because I figured everyone takes cash.

I was wrong.  The test center did not take cash.

In my hurry out the door I hadn’t grabbed my purse with credit cards and my checkbook. The woman at the desk told me I would have to reschedule the test for another day.

I asked her if she would write a check for me and I would give her $100.00 but she said no. I told her not to do anything with my registration. I said I would be back.

She tried to discourage me. She said it would be too late but I nearly shouted at her that it was my intention to take this test and to graduate the next day and that she could feel free to kick me out if I go past my registered time but that she could NOT tell me when I can start.

I ran out to the lawn and saw a young student walking past. “HEY!” I called out. “DO YOU HAVE A CREDIT CARD IN THAT BACKPACK???”

She did and we both ran into the testing center to pay for my class. I paid the woman $100 to charge the $75.

Despite the frenzy and the timing, I sat at the computer and took a moment to collect myself. I reminded myself how hard I had worked…how sure everyone was that I knew the material. I breathed. I said, aloud, “Nancy – you have everything you need to pass this test. You know the formulas. You understand the concepts. All you need to do is determine which formula the question needs in order to be resolved. YOU CAN DO THIS!”

I turned on the computer. I took a breath. Again I said, aloud, “It is my intention to answer this question correctly.”

I asked each question what formula it needed and then I told myself I knew that formula and how it worked. I applied it and moved on to the next question.

“It is my intention to pass this test.” I said, “I have everything I need. I just need to be calm and to trust myself.”

Over and over I said the same things and went from question to question until the test was completed in plenty of time. I waited for a moment before squeezing my eyes closed and pressing “SUBMIT TEST.” I was holding my breath.

When the results came up, after the longest three seconds of my life, I stared at it with my mouth agape. I was numb. I had fallen four points short…of a perfect score.

The next day I walked the stage with my daughters cheering me on. We all cried because we knew that on that day I had graduated from something much, much bigger than college.