Dear Prudence,
I was a first-generation college student, and I went on to earn a doctorate. While my siblings all had high school graduation parties, due to significant family stress when I graduated (a sibling’s pregnancy and the death of a grandparent), I didn’t get a party. My family promised to make it up to me with a party when I finished my undergraduate degree, but the party never happened (everyone was too busy that summer, they said). A party was then promised to celebrate finishing my doctorate, but that never happened either—because I got married the same year, I didn’t want to press asking for one because one of my siblings made it clear that it wouldn’t be appropriate to have two celebrations about me in the same year.
It’s been a decade now since I’ve earned my doctorate and sometimes I still regret never having an opportunity to celebrate my educational achievements (which remain singular in my family- one sibling finished an undergraduate degree, but I’m still the only one of us with a graduate degree). I am about to finish paying my student loans off. Would it be in poor taste to throw myself a belated graduation/paid-off loan party? I would specify no gifts (though donations to the first-generation student fund at one of my alma maters would be appreciated for anyone so inclined). I’m unlikely to have any further individual achievements worth celebrating before retirement, and that’s still 30 years away. Is it wrong that I want a bit of celebration now, given how hard it was to do what I did as a first-generation student paying my own way?
—Uncelebrated Graduate