Master's Degree by the age of 25? Why not!

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

Education has always been apart of my life.  My mother has made her career in the field, I started Montessori school at the age of 3 and now, I work on a college campus.  When I look around, education (or the lack thereof) has a major impact on people’s lives.  Statistically, college graduates make a million dollars more in their lifetime than a person with a high school diploma.  (This makes me feel much better about my expensive, yet very useful undergraduate education!)

When I was a student at Drake, I loved it so much and learned that I never had to leave the college environment and could actually make a career out of working there.  I attended the BIG XII Conference on Black Student Government in February 2007 and learned about the field of higher education and that I could even earn a master’s degree.  From then on, I knew that I would look to make a career in student affairs/higher education. 

Fast forward to May 2010 and I’ve graduated from Drake, ready for the “real world.” I’m pretty sure I applied for at least 100 jobs and by September, I was hired by Northern Arizona University to work as the Parent and Family Services Coordinator.  Working on a college campus has its benefits, the major one being a discount on tuition.  I contemplated attending graduate school straight out of undergrad, but wanted to avoid paying out of pocket for another degree if I could. 

I took my first graduate course in Spring 2011 and started contemplating the graduate program that I wanted to take on.  Finally, I decided on Human Relations and ambitiously, I will graduate in December 2012.  I made a personal goal to have an advanced degree by the age of 25.  By taking two classes each term, including summer and also taking a course during the winter term, I can make this happen.  I did run into a slight problem this summer already.  I signed up for a statistics course, knowing that this was not my strongest subject, but it is a required course for my program.  I started doing the work and after a short vacation, lost a little bit of motivation and fell behind in the coursework.  I ended up dropping the course and will look to take it in person instead of online.  I recognize my strengths and statistics is not one of them!  To stay on track, I had to pick up an additional class over the summer, so for the past 5 weeks, I have been on an academic grind.  Finally, the courses were over on August 9 and ended up with a 3.5 GPA (go me!) 

I find that education has benefited me in many ways, opened up a lot of doors and I’m ready for the future, true to the words of Malcolm X.