By the time anyone reads this article it will be exactly six months (184 days to be exact) since I have been done with school. I walked across my last stage to the end result being a piece of paper that's current and sole purpose has been a conversation at most.

Yes, that diploma I have worked, I have lost too many valuable nights of sleep over for almost eighteen years of my life is just a piece of paper waiting to be talked about. This makes it seem like I am not proud of what I have done or that I have not valued my education, which is entirely false.

I have valued and appreciated every moment of my life in school from Kindergarden all the way through to the night of my college graduation. However, I have learned a lot about myself in these last six months since no longer seeing myself within the suffocating confines of "the box" of being in school, grades, and constant studying. Which some if not all may find as a weird irony coming from someone who helps K-12 students with their own school (and personal) issues, homework, and studying routines.

1. Grades Aren't Everything.

I can admit that I was a perfectionist (I probably still am to a certain degree [pun intended]) when it came to everything about grades. I needed to make sure I always had perfect grammar or that my own comprehension and understanding of a topic was perfect. No matter what I sacrificed to be this version of what I thought happy and happiness was.

I would not settle for anything less.

Yes, I strived for having all A's and being on Honor Roll every term, but the truth is I believed that high B's were also placed in this high pedestal. For 17 of the 18 years were me doing everything I could to achieve this level of perfection. Even though, I knew deep down that I needed sleep to function or that I needed to take breaks so my mind could rest, I pushed myself often too far and saw what it was doing to me and my personal relationships.

The best way I could describe it was having an outer body-and mind- experience. I only realized after witnessing a child at work having an emotional breakdown over a progress report and the fear of what her own future might be that I took a step back. I realized that she was me. She was striving to achieve perfection both in academic success and her own that I realized the ridiculousness of such a goal. Seeing her this way as her support system made me see grades as "just letters" for the first time. I saw them as what they were not what they represented and became a lot happier.

While I didn't (and still don't) like the letter D and F due the innate fears I and school created for me all those years ago, I slowly started making myself proud of what I have accomplished outside of grades that didn't show up on as a single lousy letter. I was proud of finishing an essay that I researched and knew I at least tried. I knew it was my version of perfect and that was close enough since there is no such thing as absolute perfection.

2. Try, Try, and Try Again

No matter what I kept working.

I persevered and pushed on even when I knew I mentally could not handle it anymore. On the days, I mentally and emotionally just wanted to check myself, I went to class. On the rare occasions I was sick, I pulled myself to go to every class because I didn't want to fall behind. I was not going to let a little cough (once, I had a cough for three months) stop me from staying part of class discussion or hearing the next week's assignment.

For four years fellow students, professors, and my own immediate family members wondered how I could function without any coffee. I tell them that it's easy when you already cannot stand the smell. What many of them and my parents don't know is that I ran on the adrenaline of a finishing line that could not ever come within my grasp. What I didn't realize was that this supposed finish line was the walls of school after school (7.1 if we want exact numbers, more on that later). I desperately wanted to be done so I could learn what I wanted to learn and see and hear from real people with their stories.

I ran on sleepless nights while roommates slept Yet without school, I could say that I gave it my best if that wasn't good enough for some people, I can openly say that I did it and tried. I got back up even when certain assignments took longer (and sometimes much longer) for me to finish because I knew I needed to do it. I needed to prove that I could do it and that I was not going to give up.

And if you fail, I am here to say there is no such thing as failure. For some, they will lose every opportunity and battle in front of them but the true fight is getting up and not letting those defeats define you. Learn from those mistakes and always push forward. Don't let anything or anyone stop you. Remind yourself that failure is a part of life.

3. Success

For all of my childhood and then into my adult life as a college student, I have been told my teachers and many different loved ones that in order to achieve success you need an education. You need to go to school or there won't be opportunities. If you don't go to school there will be no jobs for you. I can tell you that as a child of two parents with no Bachelors' degrees, there are jobs out there and there are opportunities. You just need to be willing to define success.

Do you want to be financially successful?

Do you want to be successful because you know every big wig in your company?

What if you defined success as that person who knows the latest poll results and could talk to literally and anyone about them?

Do you define success as obtaining a Master's degree?

Have you even started applying to Masters programs?

How about going all the way to get that Doctorate degree?

How about starting your own medical practice before you are forty?

What about helping to build an orphanage in a third world country?

4. Learning Every Day

I have gained and adopted a philosophy that I refused to listen to from my parents.

Learn something new every day.

I never listened to them about this growing up because I always that meant I needed to learn from the textbooks I was given or I would not be smart enough. I don't exactly when I started to finally listening about my parents about this, but I can tell you that it is something I am going to teach my kids.

If you at least learned something new that you might not have known before then you have succeeded. You have already won. You are worth more by the values and morals you learned from yourself and others than the one of the causes of WWII was the political takeover of Germany by Hitler and the Nazi Party.

For some what you learn might be useless, but don't let them discourage you on learning what you want to learn or what you were not expecting to learn from or from whom.

5. What About My Degree?

I knew I wanted to be a writer with or without a particular degree in it.

I had the "crazy" idea since I was about seven or eight years old. It wasn't until my sophomore year of high school that I started researching what particular degree could combine my interests of creative writing and reading more books. That's when it hit me, some might even call it a simple click of a few clicks on the Google, I found out that there was such a thing as a Creative Writing major so I invested my whole being into finding anywhere that had what I was looking for. Small classrooms, no giant lecture halls, no large campuses spread out throughout an unfamiliar city, the list went on but I will not bore you.

Since I went to an art school and surrounded myself with every type of artist and person you can imagine just to gather more stories. I probably could never tell the person paying for my college that the reason I went to study Creative Writing was to hear more stories and to write them down. I just couldn't because it wasn't practical. But what was practical was accepting that I loved writing in the different genres and styles because it helped me see myself as more than just a creative and analytical thinker. I started to see myself as an artist of words and how I always would be chasing and harnessing them because they were part of me more than I could probably explain.

I bet you're wondering, what are you going to do with that kind of degree. It is quite simple actually I am going to use it. For the last fifteen or sixteen years, writing is something I have used as a way to express myself and just because I work on homework with these amazing students I also have used my writing to help them.

Two years ago, I founded one of the organization's first creative writing programs where I teach a group of elementary to high school members the basics of creative writing and public speaking as a way for them to witness their own voices come alive on and off the page. Every year, I have watched them turn their perspective of writing and art around to something that is seen as a gift and not something to suppress, be ashamed of or hide away from.

I am also the leader for several reading and letter exchange programs too, which I also have incorporating the skills I learned in school to further enrich the lives of the members I work with.

6. A "Paying" Job

As someone who worked her mind and brain (not her ass) off in school and gained a job after graduation, I can say that my determination and perseverance got me the job I am passionate about today.

This job may have started as a work study position, but after almost five years it has been my home. It became my sanctuary where I could knew I belonged and my skills, morals, and values as a person not just a student were looked at as assets not hinderances. I found a family from my coworkers who help me grow every minute I am there. The kids I have seen more of than my own little cousins see me as a role model and the big sister I always wanted to be. Today, my home is found here and I could not be more grateful for it saving my life and slowing it down.

When people ask me why I work where I do instead of going to New York and pursuing a professional career in the publishing industry, well the truth is I am happy there.

I wake up every morning ready to see kids' faces or hearing their stories of their day because I know that I may the only one that ever asks them about it. I want to make their voices count. I wake up ready to be greeted by my boss as "Maria" even though it is not my name because it always starts the day off with a good laugh or when he decides to "borrow" the peanuts off my supervisor's desk. I go to my job knowing I make an impact by just showing up and being present. I also have grown to love my quiet times after the kids leave so my supervisor and I can have impromptu Whitney Houston Duet Sessions. I even have grown to accept that part of my job may involve performing an intense dance number just to make a few thousand kids smiling.

And I bet you're wondering...

YES my type of happiness can (and does) pay my rent and student loans.