Well, the rumours are true—your time at your university really does come to an end. After four years of hard work, late nights, early mornings, a whole lotta sweat and an astronomical number of tears, I am a few days away from submitting my final presentation and with that, finishing my BA degree. What a trip, lol!
If first-year Tristan could see Tristan now, I don’t really know if she’d fully believe that this current reality was real. You see, at the start of my BA, I was a 24-year-old stay-at-home mother of three, who lived with her partner, parents, and children in Ontario. I had dropped out of college not once but twice by the time I was 22, and really didn’t know where life was going to take me. I always had a hunch that I would go back to school to obtain a BA, however, I truly did not believe that I could achieve it. I was also just really scared of not being accepted into university or failing and dropping out again once I got there. With my partner’s encouragement, however, I finally decided to apply to university, and lo and behold, this mom of three was accepted a few months later.
This whole “pushing myself outside of my comfort zone to accomplish my goals” thing became a rather recurring theme throughout the duration of my four-year degree. I have pushed myself to take thesis seminar courses and have completed seminar presentations and written thesis papers—something I had always secretly wanted to do, but never thought I’d accomplish. Although one of my biggest fears was having my written work read publicly, I still pushed myself to become a student writer for Her Campus Waterloo, an experience that has truly uplifted my experience as a university student and has allowed me to connect with so many people and really helped me in becoming a stronger writer. In my third year, my partner and I packed up our kids, my laptop and plants in a minivan and moved from Ontario to New Brunswick. This was arguably one of the scariest decisions I have been faced with, it is also one of the most beautiful life changes I have ever made. I have navigated an autism diagnosis for one of my children and have become an ASD caregiver, which is a journey that has allowed me to grow in so many necessary ways despite some of its challenges. I also endured a miscarriage and chose to share my experience publicly to help bring more awareness to women’s reproductive health, even though I was terrified of the potential stigma I could face as a result. I received my first scholarship for maintaining honour grades throughout all eight terms in my program, a milestone I could never have achieved had I not pushed myself to go back to school in the first place, regardless of how scared of rejection I was at the time.
To summarize all of this, life will throw you curveballs, and sometimes, the only thing standing between you and the solution you want or the goal you’re trying to achieve is your own self-doubt. Yes, sometimes life will be hard, and sometimes the little voice in your head will tell you that you can’t do something and sometimes tuning out that voice and persevering onward will feel impossible. I promise you that the feeling that you get when you miss out on an opportunity because that little voice won is a whole lot more consuming than the initial fear you feel when putting your all on the line to accomplish your goals. “Failing” is simply part of the process and provides the foundation necessary for you to achieve your goals. The more you tune out your self-doubt and self-worries, the easier it becomes to accomplish anything you set your heart on. Do the scary thing, you really never know where it could take you!