Graduation - Blog Posts

I needed to read this today. I recently added a 2nd major so I’m now double majoring and double minoring and it seems I won’t graduate until I am 25, which made me feel…off, at first? But reading this was like, perfect timing. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. What matters is that we are pursuing our education and will end up with our goals met by graduation. Thank you for this 💕

You should never have shame about your academic journey. It's a journey. You're growing and learning. You're going to face challenges alone for one of the first times in your life. Shit's hard. It's ok to struggle.

I haven't had a pretty journey at all. I'm graduating with a bachelor's degree at 25. I've been in college nonstop since I was 18. I've failed a lot of classes and had to go part time. So many things have happened. But I will have the degree. And that degree is worth the exact same as someone who got it in 3 years. The knowledge I have is mine to keep.

How I got here doesn't matter. I'm here. I am going to graduate in a few months. I have won this chapter of my life. And to those who try to shame me for how I got here and how long it took, I pray that you never experience the things I have that have made it take long. May you live a life of comfort and luxury and have hands soft as silk until you die. And hopefully I will get the same grace from the universe eventually.

“Good luck babe!” is my senior quote this year, because that song is my life. I’ve cried twice to it and never to any other song. It helped me figure out that I was a lesbian when I was totally struggling with comp het. I was figuring it out already, but it sure as fuck helped.

Tyyy Chappell for helping my dumb ass get through Catholic high school <3 <3 <3

K-12

All I have learned how to do is study

And memorize

And cram

With a heavy head, how am I expected to take to the skies?

I know nothing about survival

Unless grabbing the newest textbook counts

I know that it doesn’t

I guess they have failed to brainwash me completely

But I do know how to wake up and eat

Then study

Go to sleep

And repeat

Never fully knowing what the outside world is like

Never slipping out of reach

Never learning the things that will actually help me

Always shoving me down

Never letting me wonder what if

Never showing me why

But commanding me this way

And that

That’s for the authority

And the sentence

That I committed no crime for

It was quite unneeded

Trying to get me to conform

By using peer pressure

Then when its useful for you to say the opposite,

You say that we shouldn’t follow others and do as you say

Making me feel so, so little

While telling me to be an adult

Then telling me that I’m not an adult

And when I am one I will never be ready

I can't believe I am finally free

From this tortuous prison

That I used to feel embarrassed to be a part of k-12

But now I am done with k-12

So bye motherfuckers

I ain’t coming back

And I ain’t gonna be looking back

Because most of the faculty, staff, administration, and board members made me feel like shit

Believe it or not

But

School was made for kids

So stop trying to take over and ruin our lives

It’s Over

I cant believe its over

The ending came; it came without a warning; It came just this morning

And its all over now

I always knew the end of the tunnel,

Would come eventually

And its all over now

But I guess that I thought

The end would never come for me

And its all over now

The three year old is finally free

And scared

And its all over now

All those years of being held prisoner

All those moments stuck with mean dicktators

And its all over now

I was just doing my time,

Of a little shy of 20 years

And its all over now

Before I had come to the conclusion

That I had gotten a life sentence

And its all over now

Still stressed but now I can breath,

A little deeper

And its all over now

Part of me wants to go back because now I don’t know what to do,

Without someone yelling commands at me

And its all over now

On me own

All alone, just how I wanted it, right?

And its all over now

I can finally rip part of this crowded box open,

Shed my fake skin I had to plastered to myself just to survive

And its all over now

I want something different

I cant stand having the same ticky-tacky exterior of everyone else, of 9-5 days

And its all over now

T-20 years and still counting

I feel ripped off

And its all over now

Olympian Abby Wambach’s Barnard College Graduation Speech Transcript

Greetings to President Beilock, Barnard faculty, trustees, and honorees: Katherine Johnson, Anna Quindlen, and Rhea Suh.

And to each of the 619 bad-ass women of the Barnard graduating class of 2018: Congratulations!

Doesn’t it feel like the second you figure anything out in life, it ends and you’re forced to start all over again?

Experts call these times of life “transitions.” I call them terrifying.

I went through a terrifying transition recently when I retired from soccer.

The world tries to distract us from our fear during these transitions by creating fancy ceremonies for us. This graduation is your fancy ceremony. Mine was the ESPYs, a nationally televised sports award show. I had to get dressed up for that just like you got dressed up for this, but they sent me a really expensive fancy stylist. It doesn’t look like you all got one. Sorry about that.

So it went like this: ESPN called and told me they were going to honor me with their inaugural icon award. I was humbled, of course, to be regarded as an icon. Did I mention that I’m an icon?

I received my award along with two other incredible athletes: basketball’s Kobe Bryant and football’s Peyton Manning. We all stood on stage together and watched highlights of our careers with the cameras rolling and the fans cheering—and I looked around and had a moment of awe. I felt so grateful to be there—included in the company of Kobe and Peyton. I had a momentary feeling of having arrived: like we women had finally made it.

Then the applause ended and it was time for the three of us to exit stage left. And as I watched those men walk off the stage, it dawned on me that the three of us were stepping away into very different futures.

Each of us, Kobe, Peyton and I—we made the same sacrifices, we shed the same amount of blood sweat and tears, we’d left it all on the field for decades with the same ferocity, talent and commitment—but our retirements wouldn’t be the same at all. Because Kobe and Peyton walked away from their careers with something I didn’t have: enormous bank accounts. Because of that they had something else I didn’t have: freedom. Their hustling days were over; mine were just beginning.

Later that night, back in my hotel room, I laid in bed and thought: this isn’t just about me, and this isn’t just about soccer.

We talk a lot about the pay gap. We talk about how we U.S. women overall still earn only 80 cents on the dollar compared to men, and black women make only 63 cents, while Latinas make 54 cents. What we need to talk about more is the aggregate and compounding effects of the pay gap on women’s lives. Over time, the pay gap means women are able to invest less and save less so they have to work longer. When we talk about what the pay gap costs us, let's be clear. It costs us our very lives.

And it hit me that I’d spent most of my time during my career the same way I'd spent my time on that ESPYs stage. Just feeling grateful. Grateful to be one of the only women to have a seat at the table. I was so grateful to receive any respect at all for myself that I often missed opportunities to demand equality for all of us.

But as you know, women of Barnard—CHANGE. IS. HERE.

Women have learned that we can be grateful for what we have while also demanding what we deserve.

Like all little girls, I was taught to be grateful. I was taught to keep my head down, stay on the path, and get my job done. I was freaking Little Red Riding Hood.

You know the fairy tale: It’s just one iteration of the warning stories girls are told the world over. Little Red Riding Hood heads off through the woods and is given strict instructions: Stay on the path. Don’t talk to anybody. Keep your head down hidden underneath your Handmaid’s Tale cape.

And she does… at first. But then she dares to get a little curious and she ventures off the path. That’s of course when she encounters the Big Bad Wolf and all hell breaks loose. The message is clear: Don’t be curious, don’t make trouble, don’t say too much or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.

I stayed on the path out of fear, not of being eaten by a wolf, but of being cut, being benched, losing my paycheck.

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be this:

“Abby, you were never Little Red Riding Hood; you were always the wolf.”

So when I was entrusted with the honor of speaking here today, I decided that the most important thing for me to say to you is this:

BARNARD WOMEN—CLASS OF 2018—WE. ARE. THE. WOLVES.

In 1995, around the year of your birth, wolves were re-introduced into Yellowstone National Park after being absent for seventy years.

In those years, the number of deer had skyrocketed because they were unchallenged, alone at the top of the food chain. They grazed away and reduced the vegetation, so much that the river banks were eroding.

Once the wolves arrived, they thinned out the deer through hunting. But more significantly, their presence changed the behavior of the deer. Wisely, the deer started avoiding the valleys, and the vegetation in those places regenerated. Trees quintupled in just six years. Birds and beavers started moving in. The river dams the beavers built provided habitats for otters and ducks and fish. The animal ecosystem regenerated. But that wasn’t all. The rivers actually changed as well. The plant regeneration stabilized the river banks so they stopped collapsing. The rivers steadied—all because of the wolves’ presence.

See what happened here?

The wolves, who were feared as a threat to the system, turned out to be its salvation.

Barnard women, are you picking up what I’m laying down here?

Women are feared as a threat to our system—and we will also be our society’s salvation.

Our landscape is overrun with archaic ways of thinking about women, about people of color, about the “other,” about the rich and the poor, about the the powerful and the powerless—and these ways of thinking are destroying us.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

We will not Little Red Riding Hood our way through life. We will unite our pack, storm the valley together and change the whole bloody system.

Throughout my life, my pack has been my team.

Teams need a unifying structure, and the best way to create one collective heartbeat is to establish rules for your team to live by. It doesn’t matter what specific page you’re all on, just as long as you’re all on the same one.

Here are four rules I’ve used to unite my pack and lead them to gold.

Rule One: MAKE FAILURE YOUR FUEL

Here’s something the best athletes understand, but seems like a hard concept for non-athletes to grasp. Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.

Listen: Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be POWERED by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on. You gotta learn to make failure your fuel.

When I was on the Youth National Team, only dreaming of playing alongside Mia Hamm. You know her? Good. I had the opportunity to visit the National Team’s locker room. The thing that struck me most wasn’t my heroes' grass-stained cleats or their names and numbers hanging above their lockers—it was a picture. It was a picture that someone had taped next to the door so that It would be the last thing every player saw before she headed out to the training pitch.

You might guess it was a picture of their last big win, of them standing on a podium accepting gold medals—but it wasn’t. It was a picture of their longtime rival—the Norwegian national team—celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup.

In that locker room, I learned that in order to become my very best—on the pitch and off—I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power. Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.

Women, listen to me. We must embrace failure as our fuel instead of accepting it as our destruction.

As Michelle Obama recently said: "I wish that girls could fail as well as men do and be okay. Because let me tell you watching men fail up—it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating to see men blow it and win. And we hold ourselves to these crazy, crazy standards."

Wolf Pack: Fail up. Blow it, and win.

Rule Two: LEAD FROM THE BENCH

Imagine this: You’ve scored more goals than any human being on the planet—female or male. You’ve co-captained and led Team USA in almost every category for the past decade. And you and your coach sit down and decide together that you won’t be a starter in your last World Cup for Team USA.

So… that sucked.

You’ll feel benched sometimes, too. You’ll be passed over for the promotion, taken off the project—you might even find yourself holding a baby instead of a briefcase—watching your colleagues “get ahead.”

Here’s what’s important. You are allowed to be disappointed when it feels like life’s benched you. What you aren’t allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench.

During that last World Cup, my teammates told me that my presence, my support, my vocal and relentless belief in them from the bench is what gave them the confidence they needed to win us that championship.

If you’re not a leader on the bench, don’t call yourself a leader on the field. You’re either a leader everywhere or nowhere.

And by the way: the fiercest leading I’ve ever seen has been done between mother and child. Parenting is no bench. It just might be the big game.

Wolf Pack: Wherever you’re put, lead from there.

Rule Three: CHAMPION EACH OTHER

During every 90-minute soccer match there are a few magical moments when the ball actually hits the back of the net and a goal is scored. When this happens, it means that everything has come together perfectly—the perfect pass, the perfectly timed run, every player in the right place at exactly the right time: all of this culminating in a moment in which one player scores that goal.

What happens next on the field is what transforms a bunch of individual women into a team. Teammates from all over the field rush toward the goal scorer. It appears that we’re celebrating her: but what we’re REALLY celebrating is every player, every coach, every practice, every sprint, every doubt, and every failure that this one single goal represents.

You will not always be the goal scorer. And when you are not—you better be rushing toward her.

Women must champion each other. This can be difficult for us. Women have been pitted against each other since the beginning of time for that one seat at the table. Scarcity has been planted inside of us and among us. This scarcity is not our fault. But it is our problem. And it is within our power to create abundance for women where scarcity used to live.

As you go out into the world: Amplify each others’ voices. Demand seats for women, people of color and all marginalized people at every table where decisions are made. Call out each other’s wins and just like we do on the field: claim the success of one woman, as a collective success for all women.

Joy. Success. Power. These are not pies where a bigger slice for her means a smaller slice for you. These are infinite. In any revolution, the way to make something true starts with believing it is. Let’s claim infinite joy, success, and power—together.

Wolf Pack: Her Victory is your Victory. Celebrate it.

Rule Four: DEMAND THE BALL

When I was a teenager, I was lucky enough to play with one of my heroes, Michelle Akers. She needed a place to train since there was not yet a women’s professional league. Michelle was tall like I am, built like I’d be built, and the most courageous soccer player I’d ever seen play. She personified every one of my dreams.

We were playing a small sided scrimmage—5 against 5. We were eighteen-year-olds and she was—Michelle Akers—a chiseled, thirty-year-old powerhouse. For the first three quarters of the game, she was taking it easy on us, coaching us, teaching us about spacing, timing and the tactics of the game.

By the fourth quarter, she realized that because of all of this coaching, her team was losing by three goals. In that moment, a light switched on inside of her.

She ran back to her own goalkeeper, stood one yard away from her, and screamed:

GIVE. ME. THE. EFFING. BALL.

And the goalkeeper gave her the effing ball.

And she took that ball and she dribbled through our entire effing team and she scored.

Now this game was winner’s keepers, so if you scored you got the ball back. So, as soon as Michelle scored, she ran back to her goalie, stood a yard away from her and screamed:

GIVE ME THE BALL.

The keeper did. And again she dribbled though us and scored. And then she did it again. And she took her team to victory.

Michelle Akers knew what her team needed from her at every moment of that game.

Don't forget that until the fourth quarter, leadership had required Michelle to help, support, and teach, but eventually leadership called her to demand the ball.

Women. At this moment in history leadership is calling us to say:

GIVE ME THE EFFING BALL.

GIVE ME THE EFFING JOB.

GIVE ME THE SAME PAY THAT THE GUY NEXT TO ME GETS.

GIVE ME THE PROMOTION.

GIVE ME THE MICROPHONE.

GIVE ME THE OVAL OFFICE.

GIVE ME THE RESPECT I’VE EARNED AND GIVE IT TO MY WOLF PACK TOO.

In closing, I want to leave you with the most important thing I’ve learned since leaving soccer.

When I retired, my sponsor Gatorade surprised me at a meeting with the plan for my send-off commercial. The message was this: Forget Me.

They’d nailed it. They knew I wanted my legacy to be ensuring the future success of the sport I’d dedicated my life to. If my name were forgotten, that would mean that the women who came behind me were breaking records, winning championships and pushing the game to new heights. When I shot that commercial I cried.

A year later, I found myself coaching my ten-year old daughter’s soccer team. I’d coached them all the way to the championship. (#Humblebrag.) One day I was warming the team up, doing a little shooting drill. I was telling them a story about when I retired. And one of those little girls looked up at me and said: “So what did you retire from?” And I looked down at her and I said, “SOCCER.” And she said, “Oh. Who did you play for?” And I said, “THE. UNITED. STATES. OF. AMERICA.” And she said, “Oh. Does that mean you know Alex Morgan?”

Be careful what you wish for, Barnard. They forgot me.

But that’s okay. Being forgotten in my retirement didn’t scare me. What scared me was losing the identity the game gave me. I defined myself as Abby Wambach, soccer player—the one who showed up and gave 100 percent to my team and fought alongside my wolf pack to make a better future for the next generation.

Without soccer who would I be?

A few months after retirement, I began creating my new life. I met Glennon and our three children and I became a wife, a mother, a business owner and an activist.

And you know who I am now? I’m still the same Abby. I still show up and give 100 percent—now to my new pack—and I still fight every day to make a better future for the next generation.

You see, soccer didn’t make me who I was. I brought who I was to soccer, and I get to bring who I am wherever I go. And guess what? So do you.

As you leave here today and everyday going forward: Don’t just ask yourself, “What do I want to do?” Ask yourself: “WHO do I want to be?” Because the most important thing I've learned is that what you do will never define you. Who you are always will.

And who you are—Barnard women—are the wolves.

Surrounding you today is your wolf pack. Look around.

Don’t lose each other.

Leave these sacred grounds united, storm the valleys together, and be our salvation.

18 May 2022- Another Life Update (This time a happy one)

Well, I did it ya’ll. I have, officially, graduated.

These past couple of years have been rough, but I’m really proud of myself. Grad school is already hard on its own. Grad school with a pandemic AND a bunch of negative things happening in your personal life? Don’t get me started...

Anyway, I’m (cautiously) looking forward to what my future holds. So far, I’ve been able to cross off a few things from the vision board I made on New Year’s Eve. I’m determined to cross off more soon.

Also, with school out of the way, I think this is the perfect time to get back on track with my health and fitness goals. I haven’t stepped foot inside a gym in MONTHS. I’m actually looking forward to restarting tomorrow.

I know I’ve done this several times already. I used to feel embarrassed every time I would post about having another setback on here. But, you know what? I’ll restart 100 times if that’s what it takes to get to where I want. 

So, here we go again :)

Before and after graduation!

Finished the last course in my AA program! I just have to wait until my instructor submits my final grade and I can apply for graduation. It feels so good and almost unreal that it’s finally done. This semester was a challenge with a full course load, but being on a combination of the right meds made a huge difference.

This week is in the bag, or whatever that saying is. I finished my forensics paper this morning and already received my grade (100%), and just received my grade for my graphs (100%).

I’ve got 3 weeks left of business communications and 4 weeks left of forensics. Then I’m officially done with my AA! So close…

This week is a little crazy study-wise:

Forensic science - ✅ 1 chapter to read, 2-3 page paper on 1 hr video (✅ watched the video), ✅ midterm

Business communications - create 3 graphs from data sets found last week, read 1 chapter

Gender & society - ✅ read 1 chapter, two part final, posttest

Add to the fact that I’ve been driving my wife to her appts, plus getting an epidural in my neck this week. It’s a bit crazy. But I’m chugging along!

I’m so close to being done with my associates degree. I even registered for graduation two days ago!

This week is a little crazy study-wise:

Forensic science - ✅ 1 chapter to read, 2-3 page paper on 1 hr video (✅ watched the video), ✅ midterm

Business communications - create 3 graphs from data sets found last week, read 1 chapter

Gender & society - ✅ read 1 chapter, two part final, posttest

Add to the fact that I’ve been driving my wife to her appts, plus getting an epidural in my neck this week. It’s a bit crazy. But I’m chugging along!

I’m so close to being done with my associates degree. I even registered for graduation two days ago!

Improving College Outcomes

Hamilton Project released three new policy proposals by outside experts on how to changes in student lending and financial-aid policies can help improve college outcomes. The findings from the paper are here. 

The Brookings institute is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington D.C. Their mission is to conduct high-quality independent research to provide practical recommendations that advance three goals:

1. Strengthen American Democracy

2. Foster economic and social welfare

3. Secure a more open, safe and prosperous international system

The institute has notable leadership such as president Strobe Talbott and board members like Lazard CEO Kenneth Jacobs. 

It's the end of a (very wonderful) era...

NOOOOOO, GURAAAAAA....

We will all miss you and we all hope you have a wonderful journey after this graduation

Thanks for the wonderful memories ❤️ ♥️ 😢 🫡

NATG XIV - Day 30

Prompt: Draw a pony graduating / Draw a pony reaching the end of the line.

Time sure does fly, huh?

NATG XIII - Day 30 Prompt: Draw a pony graduating / Draw a pony making their dreams come true. And that's a wrap! My original idea was to do something with Moonstone, since that was the first pony I drew for this year, but I figured that this would be better. Some things are a little off, but whatever. (This was a pretty fun time! Hopefully I'll have enough time to do this again next year.)

30 january 2025

i graduated today.

i had my ethnic day yesterday so i haven’t been able to study for almost three days now but i’ll get back on track tomorrow.

anyways, goodnight.