In two weeks, I will have earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Iowa State University. I have been working toward this moment for 17 years. I have served my country with a tour in the Air Force, supported my husband through his college pursuits and have worked my way through school while maintaining a 3.91 GPA and being recognized on the Dean’s List every semester I was enrolled full time.

Yet, when I walk across the stage at Stephens, I will not be wearing “graduation with distinction” ropes and graduating summa cum laude, nor will my diploma indicate such honors. You see, I am of the dubious species Studentus transferus and do not meet the university’s requirements for the “scholastic recognition of exceptional students.”

Were I to seek the general Bachelor of Liberal Arts and Sciences degree — wherein one cobbles together three fields of their choice — I would meet the honors requirements because I attended the University of Northern Iowa out of high school. Iowa State allows a student to graduate with honors — just for an LAS degree — if they earned more than 45 credits from any of the Iowa Regent schools.

In other words, I have the minimum credits to graduate with distinction only if I get an LAS degree. I have a hard time understanding how Iowa State justifies a separate category for an LAS degree, yet fails to recognize any other special circumstances.

Because I start a graduate history program in the fall, I feel like a history degree is significantly more effective for my future goals than, what for me, would be an LAS degree in history, anthropology and music. I completed all but one of my upper-level history courses here at Iowa State, and it was here that the history faculty taught me how to craft a persuasive argument and critically analyze the work of other historians. It is here where I learned that context is the most important factor, yet the most difficult to understand.

When, on the day after my graduation, I get my first phone call from an alumni association, it will not be from UNI or from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania that I receive that call, nor will either of those schools be named on my diploma.

When the ISU Foundation contacts me for a donation, they are not going to ask me for less money based on the amount of time I was enrolled here, and the name of the school on my diploma will read “Iowa State University of Science and Technology.”

I — and others like me — deserve to “graduate with distinction” for my academic achievements. We are veterans who have attended classes at every duty station we have been assigned to or returning adults seeking a degree to make a better life for our families. We have had late nights, not from parties and crawling Welch Avenue but from putting the kids to bed before turning to homework. We have worked 40 hours a week while taking 16 credits — and still earned A’s in every class. We have juggled insurance payments with class fees and Little League games with group projects.

We deserve to have our families see us walk across the stage with ropes on — knowing that the sacrifices we made and they made were worth it.

I am not seeking special dispensation for having lived life — I only ask that those of us in non-traditional circumstances who have excelled scholastically be recognized for our achievements. I ask that the university consider how they will amend their program of graduating with honors and/or distinction to recognize the academic excellence — and end the marginalization — of adults returning to school in search of a better life for themselves and their families. By creating an additional set of ropes for “transfer student, graduating with distinction” that require 24 credits to be completed at Iowa State, the university will expand its recognition of high-achieving graduates.

In today’s new educational atmosphere, Iowa State needs to adapt to the times and make sure it recognizes all students who have excelled here within its walls.