by Ali Mechelle

Created on: June 03, 2008

I have a bachelor's degree. That may not mean a lot to some people. Or maybe it does. But however much it matters or doesn't matter to others, its level of importance to me is much more valuable.

Oh sure, there are the usual reasons. I have more jobs to choose from. I can put initials behind my name if I'm pretentious enough to do so. I can also go to my high school reunion with at least one achievement to declare.

But for me, the reasons go beyond that. The motivation for all of my braggadocios pride is the fact that it took me eight years to achieve it.

Some may wonder what level of insanity (or stupidity) I must be at to be so proud to have taken twice the time necessary to get a four-year degree. Well, to be honest, I have felt my share of shame, which increased each time I realized I was a college senior for yet another year. But now that I have finally walked across that stage, I can look back at everything I've been through, and everything I've learned, and be proud of the place that it has all gotten me to.

Having a degree carries its own set of achievements that you hear about all throughout your college career. If you're like me and have taken a really long time to get the darn thing, you will repeatedly told how great it is that you at least got your degree, no matter how long it took.

That's not why my eight years of college fill me with pride. I am just happy to appreciate that it simply took eight years for me to realize what it is I really want to do. Sadly, some people never figure that out.

The expansive number of years of my undergraduate study can be credited to a nasty personality trait I picked up as that annoying kid who was always trying to be cute and impressive.

As a child, I figured out early that the quickest way to amaze people was to declare some impressive goal. That's why I would proudly proclaim to adults that I intended to be President of the United States. Not because I actually wanted to do it, but because it sounded good to say so. By the time it was necessary to announce my career intentions to questioning adults, I simply transferred the habit of craving oohs and awes by picking an impressive major.

But I soon found that the desire to astonish people wasn't enough to actually motivate me to study for the classes required to make the astonishment complete. My level of impressiveness was dying with each drop of my GPA. Something had to be done.

I tried to figure out what I could achieve with what I had done so far. I needed something

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