When Shawn graduated high school 24 years ago, he decided he wanted to go to college. He took classes at the local community college, but Life started getting in the way.

Life kept doing that to him. Financial aid didn't always come through. The work-study program wasn't funded. Friends and family kept having the audacity to end up in the hospital and even die, and Shawn kept leaving his schooling to take care of bills and complications and the people he loved.

But he kept going back. From Long Beach, to Pierce, to San Bernardino Valley, he kept picking himself up and throwing himself back into the fray. In 2003, he earned his Associate's Degree, but he didn't stop.

Sunday, Shawn received his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Riverside. Today, his last official grade was posted, showing his cumulative GPA as 3.527. That is a helluvalot better than I did.

And even though he's already throwing himself headlong into getting into grad school (he's working towards his doctorate in clinical psychology so he can work with children), I wanted to take a moment to publicly state how damn proud I am of him for what he has done.