yes

It’s been a little while since I’ve been sappy on this site. But this, being the beginning of life as a grad school survivor, seems like a good time to spout a little saccharin.

The last time I visited my parents, I’d just gotten back from a week of hustling my name and my work to a handful of industry professionals. And their responses were enough to get me to look back again at the last two excruciating years - the gut-punching months of creative pain; the near-death moments of business math ; the bleak homework-fraught weekends and all those onsets of soul-encompassing panic.

Last year, at this time, the only redeeming thought I could draw from all of this was: “Sometimes it just sucks. And I still look ugly when I cry.” What I didn’t write on that day was that I’d spent several weeks working on that post because I'd really, really wanted to tell y’all that I’d come away with some small piece of salvation that made all the pain of that semester worth it. But I couldn’t do it. At least not with any shred of authenticity.

Which is why, this year, I let myself feel encouraged when all of those industry professionals, including the one at this agency, told me that they liked my work - that my work is smart, funny and up to par.

Then, one evening during that visit with my parents, my father asked me, “So you’re almost done with school. Are you glad you did it?” And I looked at him - the man whose emotional and financial support never wavered despite the night I called to wish him a happy anniversary only to end up sobbing and gulping that I “h-h-hated” school, despite the fact that I spent an entire summer telling him that degrees were overrated and maybe I just wouldn’t get one after all – and I answered with a genuine “yes.”

And now, six weeks later, I can still say, “Yes.” Not only because of the things that the professionals said. Not only because of what my teachers (even this teacher) said. Not only because I almost cried when another girl in my program told me that she looks to my advertising writing (mine!) for inspiration. I can say it because at least right now, today, I believe what they say. And I believe that I’ve come a long way and that even though the road ahead will beat down on my soul again, I believe that if I want to badly enough, I can keep going further.

And I believe that the last two years had something to do with that.