“Do I really need this?”  I used to think to myself at 3 am while trying to stuff my brain with statistical facts before a big test.

I am not into algebra.  I don’t like algebra.  My focus is in the arts for pity’s sake, why the heck am I doing this to myself?

And then I would scream something like “F***k you Math!” while I throw my textbook across the room knocking over a glass of something sugary, which would then tip all over my sleeping my roommate.  Waking her, and her wrath.

I didn’t need to go to college to be an artist. I could have continued doing what I was already doing.  Painting, sketching, experimenting, and buying up every art book I found interesting.

I think of what life would’ve been had I never signed on to let a classroom of judgmental art-novices stand over my shoulder.  Watching my work with one collective eyebrow up, criticisms at the ready.

So, why am I doing this?

Because I want my bachelors.  Because so many in my family didn’t get one, and I wanted to be a credit to our name and an inspiration to my children.  I wanted a better income and, hopefully, a better life.

I also wanted the general college experience.  Communal living, meeting up with cafeteria study groups, going on panty raids.  Stuff like that.

The main reason I did college, even though I didn’t have to, was because it would never, ever, hurt to learn something new.  Even if it means the casual destruction of math textbooks.