Okay so I have a confession to make. Many of you already know this but some of you don't. It's a little embarrassing, but obviously I'm not TOO embarrassed, otherwise I wouldn't be telling you. So here it is (for those of you who don't already know, and an update for those of you who do).
Technically I didn't graduate in April.
I walked, obviously, since there are a ton of pictures and hundreds of people watched me walk, but I wasn't actually graduating. See the thing is, I didn't quite have room in my schedule for my last GE, History 202, so I decided to take it online through BYU Independent Study. I started it last June and then basically did nothing about it until oh, about the next February. It wasn't a very hard class (except we had to do these one page writing assignments based on a primary source, 11 pt font, single spaced, and we were supposed to fill the entire page...let me just tell you, it was practically impossible to fill that whole page based on the questions the professor gave...but I digress). I just didn't want to do it, and I suffer from this condition called procrastination. If you are a procrastinator, online classes are the WORST. Avoid online classes like the plague. I would have rather shoved that history class in my last semester and taken 18 credit hours than do it online. If you're not a procrastinator, then online classes are fine, and you are awesome.
So anyway, the deadline for getting my online class done if I wanted to graduate in April was April 5th, and April 5th came around and my class was not even close to finished. I talked to my academic advisor, and he said if I had the class done and the grade was in by the time grades were due (which usually isn't until a week or two after the semester ends), then I would still graduate in April, otherwise I'd be technically graduating in June. He said I could still walk though, since my name was already on the program (Nice.). Well guess what? I didn't finish my class by the time grades were due. There were two weeks after graduation before we moved to Oklahoma and we all figured it would be best if I got my class done in that time. Well guess what? I didn't finish before we moved. All I had left was a few of those cursed primary source analyses, a 750 word book analysis (for a book that was on Spark Notes...see Spark Notes isn't just for lazy high schoolers), and the final. Fortunately, I got the writing assignments done pretty quickly. Also, if you don't know how BYU online classes work, you have to request the midterm/final, then they print it and you come in and take it if you're in Provo, or they mail it to the nearest university if you're outside of Provo, because it has to be proctored. You can't request the final until you have all the other assignments turned in, so once I finally got those writing assignments turned in (which by the way, is difficult when you don't have internet in your new apartment) I requested the final. And then I waited and waited and waited for it to get here. Seriously, it took more than a week. It only took us like 20 hours to drive here, but it took that stinking test like 8 days to get here in the mail. Fortunately for me, Lawton has its very own university called Cameron University so I didn't have to go far to take my final. I had to have an appointment to take it, and after waiting a few more days I finally got to take it. It was so easy, it only took me like 20 minutes and the proctor was super surprised when I came back in. She was like, "Wow, that didn't take you very long at all!" And in my sarcastic (and as my parents would say, sassy) brain I'm thinking, "Uh yeah, that's what happens when tests are easy." But anyway, I'M DONE! WOOHOO!! By the way, all the students I saw at Cameron University looked like they were 12 years old. Did I look that young when I was at BYU? I don't believe it.
So now I can officially say that I'm a graduate and I can thank people who congratulate me without lying (it's just easier to say thanks than it is to say, "well I actually didn't graduate because I had this online class and because blah blah blah..." you get it). Anyway, the moral of this story is get your online classes done in time. Or don't even take them at all. Your life would be so much easier.
And the award for world's worst (or should I say best?) procrastinator goes to me.
