Hard-Won Degree

Dear Delyara, I graduated later than everyone expected. There was a time when I was ashamed of that. I watched people I started with move ahead while I repeated modules, took breaks, disappeared for mental health reasons, came back, doubted myself, and nearly quit more times than I can count. People see the degree now and think the story is simple. It isn’t. This degree has panic attacks in the margins. It has essays written while grieving. It has nights of doubting my intelligence, my future, my right to keep going. It has every version of me that wanted to give up and did not. When I held that certificate, I did not just feel proud. I felt relieved. I felt witnessed by my own effort. I was never behind. I was fighting battles no one could see.