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I have become something I never wanted to be. I cannot find a job that I can actually take and want to take. I am not being picky here, but I think it is important that I find a job either in photography or teaching and most of those jobs I either don't ft the qualifications or they are too far away for me to feasibly apply. Different state far away. Different country. And I am feeling more and more of this pressure to make good on the promise to myself and others that this degree would lead to something. That I would be the better for the time spent, the frustrations endured, the pain, the money, the choices. And here I am, not producing. Not making any money with my hundred thousand dollar education.

I am frustrated equally by the money and tribulations as I am by the failed principles at work. I promised myself that I wouldn't squander this education. When I got my first degree I hit a bump in the road and got scared off the road (Physics) and then got a little bored and stopped working (Senioritis) and ended up with a 3.75 when the honors cutoff was 3.76. I know that may not seem like squandering to you, but had I achieved the easy A in linguistics that I very easily could have gotten, I would have that golden rope. I would have actually been in the top ten percent that I deserved, prior to my poor behavior. I would have been demonstrably worthy.

Yes, these things matter to me. This is why I have a 3.99 GPA now. Over the last three years I have gotten two A-'s. One the session that my grandfather died and I missed a week of classes (keep in mind these classes are seven weeks long) and one in Art History that I still don't know how I could have done better. I don't regret either of them because I never stopped trying. I did my best work for everyone, for every assignment. And if I didn't pass an assignment I reshot it, every time. There isn't a single assignment in the undergraduate program that I didn't pass. There isn't anything that I skimped on, any time when I fell down in my duties as a student.

But now look at me. None of that seems to have mattered. The dedication that I applied, and have always associated with success because that is always what I was told, hasn't led to anything. Out of my classmates, I am not one of the ones that is employed. I haven't been published. I haven't won any contests, been in any juried shows. Even in art, it has always been a balance of talent and hard work that has been the recipe for success. That was always what I was told. But I am getting more and more tired and more and more poor. At this rate, my husband and I can live for another 3.5 months before we need a second income to pay the bills. 3.5 months. Maybe I screwed myself over with my BA too much to recover now. Maybe I should have been a physicist. Maybe I should have stuck that out and the fact that I didn't means that my potential was squandered ten years ago when I left the program when I was third in the class. Now, I am merely another graduate student with excessive student loans and absolutely nothing to show for any of it.