Ten Years After Cancer Cost Her a College Degree, She Just Finished a Second One With a 4.0 GPA
In early 2013, a college student was diagnosed with a rare cancer, one that mostly shows up in people much older than her. Treatment was hard enough, and lasted long enough, that she had to leave school. It would take ten years to beat it.
She posted the whole arc to r/MadeMeSmile under the username sephi04, alongside a photo in a cap and gown: diagnosis, ten years of treatment, remission, and then the return. Three years ago, once she was through it, she finished the bachelor’s degree the cancer had interrupted and started a Master’s in the same breath. This week, she finished that too, Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, with a 4.0 GPA.
There’s a version of this story that stops at “she survived.” Hers keeps going past that, into a second degree earned on top of the first one cancer took from her, in a field built around helping other people through hard things. She got her old life back, then built past where it had stopped.
The post drew hundreds of comments in a day, mostly some version of congratulations. A few carried more weight than the rest: one commenter, who described themselves as a fellow cancer survivor, congratulated her on both fights at once, the one against the disease and the one to finish what it interrupted. That was the reaction the post kept getting. People recognized the shape of it, even the ones who hadn’t lived it themselves.
Ten years is a long time to be sick. It’s also, as it turns out, long enough to come out the other side with a bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, and a 4.0 GPA to show for it.
