I graduated from Baruch College on May 27, 2021, almost forty years after I started, at Queens College In September of 1982.

It’s taken that long. But thankfully, I did it and this is how I graduated with a 4.0 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature (my major) and Communications (my minor). I re-started my academic life in January of 2020. In transferring to Baruch from Queens, I had to declare and finish a new major as my previous one, Communications, Arts and Sciences no longer existed. I did not have to re-take any math or science thank goodness but I did need to complete two levels of Spanish, which I did in Fall of 2020 and the three week winter session of January 2021. I took four classes over the summer and I took four classes in both Fall of 2020 and Spring of 2021. I took every paper I wrote seriously. I wrote myriad blog posts in the asynchronous classes and I met with every professor at least once to discuss those papers. I was on group chats with people my daughters age, discussing our classes and our professors. I presented a paper on the comic Dulce Sloan. I wrote about the global trend of violence against women. I incorporated a feminist lens into as many literary heroines as I possibly could. I had zoom meetings with my classmates when we had group presentations. I missed being in the classroom but I was able to accomplish all this in part to being unemployed for the first wave of the pandemic and also, the convenience of remote learning.

Plus my own determination.

And now, now I can read a book for pleasure and I can relax for a few months and have really only one thing to do, which is my day job.

And oh this: relish in the fact that I made it!