Do you think that I am asking too much?

While I haven't technically received my physical diploma yet, I have already started batting around the idea that I should staunchly insist that people refer to me exclusively as "Linda, Bachelor of Arts," seeing as it's important that everyone be reminded of my formidable academic accomplishment with every invocation of my name.

But my plans were shattered when, after googling the etymology of bachelor on a whim, I discovered that, apparently:
By the time the 14th century arrived, "bachelor" referred to a junior member of a guild or knight. Around this same period, an alternate spelling, bachiler, came to mean "an apprentice student," or a student completing an initial level of training. It was from this usage of the word that came the meaning of a young man in the service or working as an apprentice to a knight or skillsman in order to gain greater knowledge of a field. Individuals of this status were not considered to have a mastery of the given field of study.

I find it hilarious that, etymologically, I might as well have "Linda, Noob of Arts" on my diploma.

Seriously, though, I occasionally wonder how much smarter and/or wiser I've become over the course of my time at IWU, comparable to how much smarter and/or wiser I would have been had I just spent four years bumming around my parents' houses. As a Noob of Arts, what I gained out of my education is (as I've pointed out time and time again) less immediately tangible than, say, the nursing certification that some of my peers are receiving.

This isn't to say that I can't tell that I've intellectually grown. Part of my U.S. Department of Education-Accredited Education was teaching me the ability to be a keen analytical thinker. So I'm in a good position to identify, for example, that despite the fact that I wrote an entry in this very blog in 2006 on subjectivity (and more specifically, on the fact that it's extremely important both to recognize the variations of subjective opinion on any given subject, and also to not allow subjectivity to paralyze you and prevent you from coming to your own conclusion on a matter)... It took me just about four years to actually learn that lesson.

Ironically (or perhaps illuminatingly), the fact that it's possible for me to know--and even write coherently--about something while failing to internalize it to an almost laughable degree is something I've known about myself for quite a while.