One Degree Hotter
The photographer walks behind me as I climb the CSUN library stairs in my cap and gown, and all I can think is:
This feels surreal.
Not the Instagram caption kind of surreal. Not the “I’m so blessed” influencer kind. I mean the kind of surreal where your body becomes a time machine. Where every version of yourself suddenly exists at once inside your chest. The little girl. The reckless teenager. The grieving daughter. The exhausted single mother. The woman who almost gave up. The woman who didn’t.
And there I was, climbing those stairs in heels that suddenly felt much taller than they did five minutes earlier, hearing the soft clicking of the photographer’s camera behind me while the California sun hit my graduation gown in this almost cinematic way. Students flooded the campus around me, families gathered near the library taking photos, bouquets wrapped in paper crinkling in people’s arms, laughter echoing through the courtyard, and for one suspended moment…
Everything slowed down.
I stopped halfway up the stairs and looked out over campus.
And instantly, I was transported back two years.
Same stairs. Same giant library looming in front of me. Same feeling in my stomach.
Except back then, I wasn’t wearing honors cords.
I was wearing fear.
I remember standing there on my very first day at CSUN at 29 years old with an eight-year-old daughter at home, staring at the campus, thinking:
How the hell did I get here?
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Where do I park?
What building is this?
Why are there eighteen people skateboarding at dangerous speeds?
Why does everyone look like they know exactly where they’re going?
And why do I suddenly feel like I accidentally wandered into somebody else’s life?
Yesterday at my honors convocation, I felt that exact same confusion all over again.
Only this time, it came with cords.
Nobody talks enough about how hilariously disorienting it is being a first-generation college graduate. Everyone around me somehow seemed born knowing the choreography of academia. People gracefully gliding into lines, confidently finding their seats, adjusting their tassels as if they’ve apparently attended seventeen graduations before breakfast.
Meanwhile, I was holding my honors cords, my phone, my lip gloss, my emotional baggage, and approximately forty-seven unanswered internal questions.
Do I sit here?
Wait, no, is this for graduate students?
Am I in the wrong line?
Why does everyone look calm?
Where do I walk next?
What is happening?
What is happening?
At one point, I genuinely considered just following a random group of girls and hoping for the best.
And then…
They called my school.
Everything became blurry for a second.
I stood there frozen as applause erupted around me, and suddenly I could hear my best friends screaming from somewhere in the crowd. Loudly. Unapologetically. The kind of scream that only comes from people who know exactly what it took for you to survive long enough to reach this moment.
I could see my loved ones scrambling through rows, trying to get better seats, waving frantically, phones out, trying not to miss the moment. My daughter’s face, searching for me in the crowd.
And for a split second, I had this overwhelming realization:
Oh my God. This is real.
Not the pain.
Not the struggle.
Not the trauma.
The success.
The survival.
The becoming.
I think people assume moments like this feel purely happy. But nobody prepares you for how grief sneaks into your victories, too.
Because while everyone clapped for me, there was a quiet ache sitting beside my joy.
My mom should have been there.
That thought hit me like a wave.
I imagined her watching me walk across that stage. I imagined her crying. I imagined her saying she was proud of me. And suddenly, the girl inside me who lost her mother during her very first semester of college felt very, very present.
There’s something uniquely painful about accomplishing things after losing someone you desperately wanted to witness them.
Especially your mother.
I started college in 2022, and my mom died of an overdose during my first semester. There’s no graceful transition into a sentence like that. Grief entered my academic career immediately and unpacked itself into every corner of my life. And yet somehow, life kept moving.
Assignments still had due dates.
Discussion boards still needed responses.
APA citations still demanded to be properly formatted, even while my emotional stability absolutely was not.
There is something deeply absurd about writing:
“According to attachment theory…”
While actively unraveling your own attachment wounds in real time.
Turns out healing and finals week have terrible timing.
And somehow, despite everything, I kept going.
Not gracefully.
Not perfectly.
Get Goharik Tashchyan’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Sometimes I kept going with iced coffee and anxiety. Sometimes with prayer. Sometimes out of pure stubbornness. Sometimes, because my daughter still needed dinner even when I emotionally felt like collapsing onto the floor like a Victorian woman with tuberculosis.
And God… my daughter.
Nobody talks enough about the guilt single mothers carry in academic spaces.
There were moments Bella would say:
“You’re always doing homework.”
And every single time, it pierced me.
Because she wasn’t wrong.
I tried explaining to her the best way I could:
“I’m doing this for us.”
Trying to explain delayed gratification to a child feels a little like explaining taxes to a golden retriever. They hear the words, but emotionally, they’re just wondering why you can’t play right now.
And yet, she watched me.
She watched me continue.
She watched me study at the kitchen table. Cry over papers. Celebrate passing grades. Run from classes to pick-up lines. Carry textbooks and groceries at the same time. She watched me become.
And maybe that’s the most important degree I earned here.
Not psychology.
Not honors.
Proof.
Proof that cycles can end.
Proof that little girls who grow up in chaos can still build beautiful lives.
Proof that foster youth are not statistics.
Proof that grief does not disqualify you from greatness.
And somewhere between psychology lectures, anthropology discussions, emotional intelligence training, MITT, therapy, heartbreak, celibacy, Christ, and complete nervous breakdowns disguised as productivity…
I slowly stopped abandoning myself.
Psychology taught me behavior. Anthropology taught me context. Christ taught me mercy.
Together, they taught me how to love.
Not performative love.
Not self-sacrificing, identity-erasing love.
Real love.
The kind that doesn’t demand I bleed to prove my worth.
For years, I thought love had to be earned through overgiving. Through beauty. Through sexuality. Through being chosen. Celibacy forced me to confront every single one of those beliefs head-on.
And let me tell you:
When you stop seeking validation from men, suddenly you’re left alone in a room with yourself and the Lord.
Terrifying.
Beautiful.
Holy.
For the first time in my life, I began understanding that I didn’t need to give pieces of myself away to deserve love.
I was already loved.
That realization changed everything.
Even my dreams changed. This year, I stopped calling it a vision board and started calling it a faith board. Because manifestation once felt like trying to control life before it hurt me.
Faith feels different.
Faith says:
“Even if I cannot see the entire staircase, I will still climb.”
And that’s exactly what I’ve done.
Step by shaky step.
So yes, graduating feels bittersweet.
Because my undergrad years became the high school experience I never got to have. Friendships. Community. Disneyland trips. Campus crushes. Field trips. Networking events. Staying up too late with classmates. Pretending my life was together in discussion boards while internally screaming.
The younger version of me finally got to live.
And now I have to say goodbye to her, too.
But maybe that’s what growing up really is.
Not becoming someone entirely new.
Just finally allowing all the broken versions of yourself to sit together at the same table without shame.
And now?
Now I move forward.
Graduate school awaits. Social work awaits. Purpose awaits.
And for the first time in my life, I’m no longer terrified of the future.
I’m walking toward it.
One degree hotter.
