Graduation

By: Christine McFarlane

Having a degree behind my name means a lot to me and though I know it does not define who I am, I know that when I hold my degree in my hand after crossing the floor at Convocation Hall, that my degree will represent the struggle, the tears and the triumphs it took to get me to where I am today.

Completing my undergraduate degree is not my first attempt at a post secondary education. Years ago, when I was seventeen years old, I enrolled in college to try and complete a Journalism-Print program but was unable to complete my diploma requirements due to health reasons. I believe that though I had problems beforehand dropping out just made me feel more lost because I did not understand who, what or where my role was in society. I floundered because it had always been drilled into me that education was the key to success. It was dropping out of a post secondary education and having to rely on social assistance that made me feel like I was failure and this made me embark on a path that could have seen me end up elsewhere-another statistic of someone falling through the cracks in our society.

My degree will define the hard work I put into getting it because there were so many times that I believed that I would not make it if it was not for the support I received from First Nations House of the University of Toronto, and the professors I met along the way. Though it is scary to finally be graduating, it is also exciting because I am the first in my biological family to obtain a University education and I know that many doors will open for me now that I have this degree behind me. It will allow me to do the things I have always wanted to do. It will help me find a job and it will give me more autonomy. I am hoping that it also allows me to show my teenage niece that if ‘you work hard enough in something you believe, you can achieve it,’ and lastly I hope that it will show others who have faced adversity and still struggle with where they might go in life, that they can succeed too.”

  

(though varied a bit, this piece will also be in the upcoming issue of FNH magazine)