Valedictorian of the Class of Danya
I’ve been keeping a secret. A few secrets, actually. I learned in therapy that we attach secrets to shame, and I am emerging from my feelings of shame to a space of celebration and I want to share it with you.
So….
I am graduating from college!
You might be thinking, “Danya, you are 39 years old and far from the hottie you were in the early 2000s when you strutted around bars wearing halter tops and Steve Madden platforms. What do you mean you are just now graduating from college?”
Well it’s a long story that I have largely kept to myself for 15 years.
In the fall of 2004, my husband (then fiancé) was about to graduate from K-State with his degree in Electrical Engineering. We had these visions of him landing his dream job with Garmin or any other prestigious company, meaning we had arrived as successful adults in our early 20’s. We were to be married in the spring of 2005, so I moved with him to Kansas CIty in January 2005 (because I couldn’t stomach the thought of us being apart for even a day) despite being short 3 classes of earning my Bachelor of Science in Journalism degree.
No biggie, I thought. These were classes I could take at the local community college and transfer. But these were my most disdained courses I had purposely been avoiding for 5 years: Biology, Statistics and Trigonometry - The Axis of Evil.
Nothing came easy in that first year of marriage. Well, some things came easy (wink, wink). Lucrative job offers didn’t pour in for AJ like we anticipated, so I took a job at an upscale stationery boutique to support us and enrolled in Biology and its lab 3 days a week at the local junior college. It was a scrappy effort but I completed the class.
Then we got a call about a job offer for AJ in Reno, Nevada, a few months after we were married. I delayed my education in an effort to get in-state tuition at the University of Nevada and worked full time. I thought I had oodles of time to launch my career….
Then I got pregnant shortly after our two-year anniversary. Our focus shifted to preparing for our little baby bear. This meant I needed to delay my ambitions, but the wholeness of starting our family made the change of direction just fine.
Right after SJ’s birth we moved back to Kansas City to be closer to family because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. I was a stay-at-home mom and poured myself into that role. Once SJ began Kindergarten in 2013 I knew it was time to grab the baton and finish my degree. Back at the same junior college from seven years earlier, I went to Statistics class two nights a week and passed.
The spring of 2014 I enrolled in my final class, Trigonometry. I thought that would be it. Then AJ was assigned a very intense, high-profile project in San Diego and was gone about 75% of the time. SJ was just in school half a day and that made it difficult for me to focus on a subject with seemingly impossible content. AJ’s company asked us to make a temporary move to San Diego to focus wholly on this client. We accepted so that our family wouldn’t be apart so much. And because, San Diego, right?! So I withdrew from the course.
Time just kept passing. And passing. I worked part time, then full time. All the while having nightmares related to me having “Imposter Syndrome” for not officially completing my degree. I had passed all of the courses applicable to my field of study with ease, but the nagging voice in my head reminded me in no uncertain terms, “You did not complete your degree.”
I lost my full-time job due to the pandemic. I handled HR, budget management and event planning for a major retailer. Guess what was NOT happening during the pandemic? Hiring, spending money, and events. Thus the elimination of my department. Lots of soul searching ensued and I knew it was time.
I enrolled in Self-Paced Trigonometry at the local junior college. Again. But this time I was thirsty. I dubbed the effort “Danya’s Last Stand.”
Agony. That is the only characterization of my emotional state every time I logged in to my course. I had not thought about College Algebra in more than a decade so I had to research concepts like rational numbers and become reacquainted with (an antiquated and inappropriate via modern-day standards) Chief Soh-Cah-Toa. I would hold my breath as I answered complicated questions about triangles more complex than that they did, indeed, have three sides.
It took nine months. Very few people knew about my class. I was fearful something else would come up and I wouldn’t be able to finish. Or it would just be too hard and I wouldn’t pass. Both were real possibilities. But chapter by chapter I progressed and, after nine months, I passed. Hell, I even ended up with a “B.”
Growing up my ambition was always to have a thriving career in Public Relations and work in a high-rise building where I wore cute clothes from Theory and carried a designer briefcase. I don’t think of myself as a failure for not achieving that dream, though. My life is full and happy in ways I didn’t realize it could/would be. Discussion can ensue about whether or not it is tragic that the woman (me) gave up on her childhood dream of being a corporate badass and busting through a glass ceiling in the name of raising her family. Truthfully, that would have been a happy and joyful path for me. But I have never been a “one dream” kind of person. I have a dream of moving to a 200-year-old farmhouse in Vermont and having a huge vegetable garden and orchard that I tend to when I am not hosting tastings at a cheese shop. Or living in a cottage in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, and writing for the local newspaper, “The Pinecone.” There are so many iterations of life that can give you joy and satisfaction that it is nonsense to pigeon hole yourself to one scenario and deem yourself a failure if you do not achieve that life.
It would have been easier to finish college the traditional way in 4 years. But I don’t know if the feeling of completion is any more or less sweet 17 years later. A quote that kept creeping up on me when I was feeling old and dumb for taking Trigonometry at nearly 40 was, “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” The pandemic became that for me and many others - a moment of reckoning where all we had was…time. I just needed it to match my psyche.
I feel vulnerable putting this out into the world (or the dozen or so people who will read this). Maybe it will inspire you to pick up an old hobby or dream and see where it takes you. Or maybe you will think of me as a person who should have just done things “the right way” to begin with and finished my degree before getting married. But none of that is for me to decide for you. Or you me. Just don’t let the time something will take to complete keep you from trying. The time will pass anyway.
My diploma arrives in December and that will make it official: Danya Jo Morris Johnson has received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Journalism and Public Relations from the A.Q. Miller School of Mass Communications at Kansas State University.
