Keep Choosing Yourself by Lexie Wolf
Last Friday I had the privilege of watching about two thousand beautiful young adults receive college degrees from UNC Greensboro, my daughter India included.
Two thousand. Yes, it’s a lot. There was plenty of time to think as each name was called and each bright young graduate walked, danced, or shimmied – across the stage.
To complete a four year long project is an accomplishment for anyone, but especially for someone so young. If you graduate at around 22 years of age, you’ve spent about 18% of your life to date on this goal.
I thought a lot about the hundreds of smaller accomplishments that are wrapped up inside the bow of a college degree. Classes attended, papers written, exams taken, projects completed. Planning the course of study. Making decisions. Moving in. Moving out. Earning money to pay for it. And on, and on, and on and on.
To graduate from college, you have to choose yourself—again and again. And again. More precisely, you choose your future self, in a thousand small and significant ways.
You choose to get out of bed and go to class. To open the laptop when you’d rather close your eyes. To finish the paper, to speak up in class, to show up for the group project. You choose to stay the course, even when the professor is boring, the reading is dense, and it all feels like too much.
The strength of will this accomplishment requires, in this very challenging world, brought tears to my eyes as I watched these students take their victory lap.
I gazed around the packed coliseum at the shining proud faces of the families and friends. The support systems. The cheerleaders. The shoulders to cry on. The financial help, if the student should be so lucky. At UNCG, a little over 50% of graduates are the first in their families to graduate from college. The dream is alive. It is battered, and broken, but it is alive.
When congratulating India, I have also found it also necessary to say this: You are not your college degree. You are not your accolades. You are not your GPA or your body or even your mind and your thoughts. You are worthy and perfect no matter what you do or don’t do, and perfect just as you are in every moment. (Happy to report my kids don’t even roll their eyes anymore when I say something like this, so used to it are they).
So if you’re reading this as a graduate—or the proud parent or loved one of one—take a moment to let it all land. You did something big. You showed up for yourself, over and over again.
And at the same time, remember this: you were already enough before the degree, and you’re enough now, exactly as you are. The world will keep trying to measure your worth by your output. Don’t let it. Keep choosing yourself—not just the future you, but the present one too. She’s worthy of rest, joy, celebration, and love.
Congratulations to India. Congratulations to the whole class of 2025. May your next steps be both brave and soft, and may you always remember: you’ve got nothing to prove.
