At Long Last...

I just sent off my last paper for my correspondence class.  Which means I have officially completed my work for my Bachelor's degree in Anthropology.  Since the paper was two days later than I'd hoped to have it sent, I'm still riding the tide of "holy procrastinating rush, Batman!"  I'm sure it will sink in soon, though. :)

I started my degree in Creative Writing in the fall of 1999.  I so didn't want to be there.  I wasn't ready to make so many changes all at once, and I knew my social skills needed more time to grow.  In an emotional whirligig (reflecting back upon which now, I see that had a lot more to do with my grandfather's cancer diagnosis and my parents' arrival at the final descent into divorce than anything going on in my life directly), I left English and CSU behind permanently in January of 2001.  I chose to work instead.  Had I not, I never would have gotten to know the Jeremelon, never dated him, married, and had all the adventures, good and bad, that brought us the Berrykin and to where we are right now.  Still, I didn't leave school behind.  I wanted a degree, and I was determined to get one...I just realized it was going to have to be on terms that would work for *me,* as an individual.

I enrolled in classes at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, assuring myself (ironically, it turns out) that this would not be the school listed on my diploma.  I was only there to fulfill some of my general requirements and boost my GPA before moving on to a better school.  That endeavor was moderately successful.  It was much better for improving my outlook on my own abilities.  I registered to begin classes at a school in Pennsylvania, but after a trip to find housing with my mother sent up warning signals in my brain, I withdrew without ever going back.  Instead, I moved to Albuquerque to pursue Anthropology at the University of New Mexico in January of 2003.  I liked Albuquerque.  It was new.  It was different.  Best of all, it was mine.  And, okay, it was also close enough to home that I could come visit on weekends if I got homesick but far enough away that I felt detached from my family and on my own.

A year later, I was told by an authority I trusted that the career I intended to pursue was likely to be defunct by 2013 (he was wrong, by the way, but I had no way of knowing that).  Plus, when Jeremelon and I got married at the end of 2004, I realized that the lifestyle we intended - which required at least one of us to be away from home for extended periods of time - wasn't conducive to raising the family I so dearly wanted.  We took a year to make plans and decisions, and then we moved to Florida, my degree only half-finished, so that Jeremelon could pursue his film dreams while I figured out what I wanted to do.

In the fall of 2003, I had also officially begun my journey toward becoming a professional writer.  I joined professional organizations and gobbled up all the business, industry, and creative information I could find.  I also started writing what was to become my first completed novel.  Upon arriving in Florida in the summer of 2006, I decided that this, having been my "dream" career since high school, should become my focus.  Jeremelon agreed that I should have time to pursue it, and we elected to become a starving-artist couple, free and willingly.  Florida and I didn't agree with each other, unfortunately, and I came home for an extended visit only a year later.  During that time, I got a job and made plans.  I got accepted to CU, and began the process of transferring.  This period of time was very tightly wrapped up in my marriage and various troubles we were having.  I had two paths in front of me.  I chose the one that took me back to Florida.  I attended Jeremelon's school, now Full Sail University, with the intentions of receiving a degree in interactive art that would, hopefully, lead to a design career that meshed well with Jeremelon's plans.

That path soon led us to California.  We landed there, green and eager, in the midst of the writer's strike of 2008 and the downturn in the economy overall.  Realizing our monumentally bad timing (not to mention how poorly the planning we had done was actually going to work, given that we were living entirely at the whim of his parents and grandparents), we left all of our belongings in Jeremelon's grandparents' garage (not having the money to transport it again) and moved in with my mom.  That not working so well either, we took the room generously offered by some friends and began piecing together a somewhat desperate present in the hopes of surviving to make a more solid future.  While there, I enrolled in the University of Advancing Technology's distance program in Game Design.  I was hugely enthusiastic about their Artificial Life program, and we made plans to move to Phoenix to follow that excitement.  Fortunately (and with regret), a paperwork error on the school's side led me to investigate more fully the overwhelming situation with our student debt.  I immediately withdrew and went back to the drawing board.

2008 was a very, very hard year.

(To be continued...)