After nearly 12 years attending college, I can sometimes turn bitter in my endless pursuit to finish. So as much as I try to keep my college bashing to a minimum in front of my children (lest I discourage them from enrolling) sometimes I slip and utter phrases like “this stinks”, or something equally low about the ridiculousness of a given assignment. In fact the closer the deadline of a major assignment, the nastier the comments get.

Today however I received an email from a girl I met last week. In it she thanked me for giving her a ?motivational push? to fulfill her dream of finishing college and re-enrolling in her Bachelors program. Ironically this email came as I was cramming to complete the final two major assignments for my last night of class. My first reaction to the email was shock and excitement that someone was encouraged to further their education from something I said. Almost instantly though my thoughts jumped to the moments in the last few years where I have been either ranting or in tears, while forcing myself to keep working on my schooling, and the realization hit me that my name will be what follows the bleep in this girls new misery. Who would?ve thought that one brief encounter could turn me into a motivator and Satan all at once?