My dream, no longer deferred
A Dream Deferred
By Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
The first and last lines of this poem were heavy on my heart a year ago, when I decide to defer my dream to go to grad school for my MBA. What would happen to my dream? Would it explode? I knew that postponing my plans to apply to school that year was the right thing to do; I had just taken a promotion into the most challenging job of my life, was planning a wedding and about to be married, and was still working my way out of undergraduate school debt.
But delaying school was a risk. It meant risking becoming too comfortable with my new life and not wanting to take on the inherent discomfort of a 63-unit, three-year commitment. It meant being older at graduation, having more professional entanglements fighting for my time, delaying starting a family. My window for school and everything else on that list was closing, I had maybe one more year at most I could wait, so I took the risk, and I waited.
The benefit of my premature drive was that I had already taken the GMAT, a three-month study investment that made for the hardest summer of my life. But it was done, and I got the score I set out to get, so for the next year, my application essay baked inside my head while I prayed that my dream would not crust over, or explode.
I submitted my application to University of Southern California Marshall School of Business in the first of several application rounds. My eggs aren’t getting any younger, and I needed to have an answer as quickly as possible.
And thus my dream, unlike potentially my eggs, did not dry up like a raisin in the sun. I was admitted to the matriculating class of 2015.
It will not be easy. I will still be balancing school with a very demanding workload, a desire to go to the gym once in a while and get a good night’s sleep, and most importantly - my relationship with my husband and time spent together at the Farmhouse. But I will be out of debt from my undergraduate degree. I will be a little more world-wisened than I was a year ago. And my brain is in a better place to absorb real-world business concepts that I will take back to work with me the next day.
So for the next three years, my motto will be Fight On. Not just for the USC Trojans, but for myself, my sanity, my relationship, my happiness, my eggs, and my dream. Fight On!