That's A Cute Little College

"That's a cute little college."
and
"I hope you're proud of yourself."

The two memorable lines from my parents this weekend. The weekend of my graduation (or at least my comencement of my graduation).

Let's go over what those mean, if you don't speak passive aggressive parent. I'll help translate.

#1- "That's a cute little college."
This came while touring SNHU's physical campus for the first time from my mom.

What does it mean?

First it means that my mom's first idea behind my graduate school is this -

My school, and therefore my education, isn't to be respected. It's a cute little school, providing me with a cute little education, in a cute little field. My school has accidents on the floor, and can't stand up or take corners too fast without tripping over it's own feet.

That pretty much solidified the inability of my parents being able to see that my degree was legitimate and took time and effort to obtain. It's a cute little school, handing out cute little arts degrees. Whatever, I forgot about it, and I moved on.

I go and walk. I look like a boss in my robes and hood and am happy as anything out there in the world. I'm pulling a full fledged ultra grin at some moments.

Even the fact that the teacher that told me that I should make my papers "sexy" and feel "hot" about the subject got an award, I was still happy. It was a good day for me. My wife was proud, my daughter was proud, I'm sure my grandparents were proud of me, even my in-laws called up and said that they were proud of me and sorry they couldn't make it.

Even though at that point I still had 4 more weeks of school, I had won the game.

That night, while talking to my parents and trying to get a simple, 'we're happy for you' or even the rare and never heard in years, 'we're proud of you' I got the second quote-

#2 - "I hope you're proud of yourself."

Now this might seem like a good thing to say. I hope you find pride in your own accomplishments. Give yourself a little self-five, and be happy for what you did.

Don't you wish it was that easy.

What this translates to is years of growing up, screwing something up and hearing, "I hope you're proud of yourself now."

Throw away something important? "I hope you're proud of yourself, now we/you can't do . . . "
Make the family late for anything for something that you did? "I hope you're proud of yourself now we're going to be late for . . ."

That phrase is not one that is a good thing, that's the phrase before shame.

The options for the rest of that sentence are great things like -
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you have to do something real with your life."
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you're in debt with nothing to show for it."
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you have to support your family."
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you have to grow up."

To be perfectly clear, not once did either of my parents say that they were happy for me, or proud of me.

So yeah, screw that. My parents were a waste of space this trip. The close runner up if you've been following the stupidity of my parents trying to rationalize traveling out here was the, "We wouldn't have missed this for a million dollars." Actually, you did want to miss this for only a few thousand dollars, so umm. . . there's that.

I got a masters degree in a field that I have a passion for and want to be in.
I'm doing what I want to do and it's not easy for others to do it.
At least for right now, yes, I am proud of myself.