On Wednesday, three days before my graduation with my M.Ed., I received an email from my thesis advisor. My thesis was inadequate. It needed about 5 gazillion more hours of work.
I'll admit. Tears sprung to my eyes. While I have been working on this degree for SEVEN YEARS, my thesis has been a semester-long project. It has not been without sacrifice. Barkernews has been a single parent for many nights while I worked on it. I had to will myself to work on it after a long day of teaching when my brain was fried and I was exhausted.
Side note: In 2008, the year Hazel was born, I remember bringing her to class with me, hoping and praying she would sleep for the 3-hour stretch so I could get my work done. Mostly, she complied. Sometimes she didn't and that sucked.
In the end, I hated the damn thesis. I was SO. OVER. IT. But Barkernews would not let me quit. My parents harassed me constantly. My teammates even got in on the act, texting me, messaging me and generally annoying me.
It wasn't in vain. I did those edits. Barkernews sat on the couch and yelled encouragement at me: "GO! GO! GO! You can do it! C'mon, HTFU!" Oddly enough, this wasn't super helpful, but I did appreciate his good intentions.
And I passed. Relief gradually sunk in, but reality has not. I started the master's program when I was in the first year of a new and very demanding job. At the same time, I was a ski patrol apprentice and I was training for a half-ironman. My time was tightly managed, but I still made it to class two nights a week and got As. I skied 50 days that year and probably rock climbed a good 30. This semester, I was not a ski patrol apprentice, but I still have a demanding job, a 3-year-old daughter, and I am still training.
It was much more difficult. Given that, I vow to never take another class again. Or at least not for a long, long time. It still hasn't hit me that this whole master's thing is not hanging over my head anymore.
I cannot appreciate Barkernews enough. He made me do it and he made it possible to finish it. That man is GOLD. I get a little teary-eyed every time I think about it. When the speaker at graduation said that a master's degree is really a Family Degree, he wasn't kidding. If I could, I would hood Barkernews with a Master's of Awesomeness.
All that to tell you...from here on out, you should now address me as Master.
