Step by Step Parenting

I remember the fear and anxiety like it was yesterday.

I had just completed my first semester of college ever, at Brigham Young University – Hawaii. We had received our final grades and now had a GPA. It was already late afternoon, because I had put off calling my parents all day. Why was I so anxious to call them?

Because I was going to have to say something along the lines of, “Hey Mom, hey Dad! Thanks so much for being generous enough to pay for my college, and in Hawaii of all places! So cool… um, anyways… I failed my first semester.”

Failed. Flunked. 1.6 GPA. There was no positive way to slice it. I was getting put on academic probation.

There are a lot of reasons this happened, and for awhile, I loved to blame the really difficult, 4 credit hour Japanese class that I took. But the real reason I flopped so bad, after a lifetime of being high achieving, “gifted” student who took AP classes and worked years ahead in school, even graduating high school early, can be summed up in one photo:

Yup, it’s a teenager fresh out of high school, with her first taste of freedom, on a beautiful tropical island (and with a cheeseburger!). Can you blame me for skipping out on studying from time to time when THIS was a ten minute walk from my dorm??

Needless to say, failing, and having to admit this failure to my parents, definitely scared me enough to get my sh*t together. Part of my academic probation at BYUH meant that I had to take a Student Development class, where we were taught how to study and note take effectively, make a study schedule, and have a good relationship with professors. Just one semester later, I had almost straight A’s, had a job working in the university’s Reading and Writing Center as a tutor, and even had some of my poems published by various literary journals. This trend for the most part continued for my remaining two semesters at BYUH. I had finally figured out how to succeed in college!

Then this happened:

Ok I’m definitely skipping ahead a bit, but essentially, after attending BYUH from January 2018 to April 2019, I came home to North Carolina for the summer, resumed working at my high school job, met a guy, fell in love, eloped, took fall semester off of college… you know the drill. Just a few months after we got married, and a few weeks shy of my 20th birthday, my life changed forever: I found out I was pregnant!

I knew moving back to Hawaii was out of the question, so I transferred to the University of North Carolina – Greensboro, and registered for the Spring 2020 semester.

2020… does that ring a bell? Pretty sure it does for everybody. A few weeks before COVID-19 became a full blown pandemic in the United States, I withdrew from all of my college courses while in the thick of the first trimester of pregnancy, too sick to go on. In retrospect, if I had known that in a few weeks time, we would be allowed to take our courses online or even withdraw completely without penalty, I would have tried to hang on a little bit longer. But hindsight is 20/20, so I tried to take this new setback in stride.

The next few semesters are honestly a blur. Once I recovered from the first trimester, I started part-time online courses while 6 months pregnant. I was even doing homework when I went into labor! I took classes year round with no breaks for the next year, straight through childbirth and the newborn phase.

The older my daughter got, the farther away my dreams of graduating college seemed, and if I’m being completely transparent, the less I cared. I knew that a college degree was important — my parents made sure of that — but it was hard to keep that motivation when I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to major in, and when a part of me wanted to cry every time someone asked, “So what do you want to be when you grow up!”

I trudged onwards and got the A’s and B’s, but I didn’t have much direction. Sure, I used to want to become a lawyer or get my PhD, but those options felt next to impossible now that I had a child to raise. My then-husband worked long hours, making the logistics of me getting to campus 45 minutes away complicated, and eventually I decided I would just do my time, graduate, and maybe become a teacher or a tutor with my English degree. Or maybe a secretary. I didn’t really care, as long as it had good hours and paid enough. I had lost my motivation, direction, and any confidence remaining in my academic ability. I was embarrassed that I was still in undergrad at the beginning of 2022, after starting college back in 2018, while most of my friends had already graduated.

Then came the last big stumbling block: divorce.

Towards the end of 2022, I packed all of my belongings into my Honda Civic and drove twenty minutes across town to move back in with my parents. If not finishing college in time and having a kid at only twenty wasn’t the ultimate failure, then this definitely had to be… right?

At this point, I was sick of being in college, so I took advantage of our new 50/50 custody arrangement and threw myself back into school. After a few years off, I was a full time student again starting in Spring 2023. As I raced towards graduation, while working part time and navigating a divorce, it was time to get serious about my post-graduation plan. I was working on homework late one night, listening to a song that my friend had recommended, when a lyric hit me like a smack to the face:

“I got dreams, but I can’t make myself believe them/Spend the rest of my life with what could have been.”

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering what could have been. It sounds silly, but a lyric in a Noah Kahan song was my wake up call! I didn’t want to be the person who said, ten, fifteen, or twenty years from now, “Well, I could’ve done something great… but don’t we all think that at some point? You know how it goes, life happens, I had a kid, got divorced, etc…”

I couldn’t pinpoint at exactly what point I had stopped believing in my dreams, but all I knew is I was over it. Time passes regardless of what we do with it, so I had to ask myself the question of, “If everything can work out, where do I want to be in three years?”

I sat for the LSAT about a month later (side note: it worked out for me but DO NOT do that!!! Not enough time to study!!) and received my acceptance letter to law school almost exactly a year after that.

I feel beyond grateful for all of the professors, friends, and family who helped me get to this point. All it took was enough people pushing me along, saying, “Yes, you can do this, and yes, I believe in you!” to get me where I am today. I’m only a month into law school, and not only have I already met some amazing people, but I have truly met people from all walks of life. Some of my classmates are right out of undergrad, some of them have been in the workforce for decades, several of us have kids, or have been through divorces, and I’m sure all of us have gone through some sh*t.

But we all made it.

So whatever your dreams are — law school, med school, a PhD program, writing a book — you’re not too stupid, you are beyond capable, and it’s never, ever too late.

Chase those goals,

Megan Eldredge