“Since You Got Your Degree and You Know Everything”

There’s a line from Precious that lives rent free in my mind: “Since you got your degree and you know everything.”

It’s usually said with a side‑eye. A tone. A pause that lets you know the degree changed how people see you, even if it didn’t change how you see yourself.

Being an educated Black woman, especially in higher education, is a complicated kind of becoming. It’s pride mixed with grief. Achievement wrapped in isolation. Celebration followed by silence.

The Degree Changes the Room

No one really prepares you for how your family dynamics might shift once you cross a certain academic line.

Suddenly, your opinions are labeled as “doing too much.” Your boundaries are read as arrogance. Your language, refined through years of reading, writing, theorizing, and surviving. You’re told you’re “talking White,” “acting brand new,” or “forgetting where you came from.”

And when conflict shows up, that phrase comes out:

“Well since you got your degree and you know everything…”

It’s rarely about the argument at hand. It’s about discomfort. About power. About the unspoken fear that education creates distance, even when your intention was connection.

You Didn’t Outgrow Them—You Outgrew Silence

For many of us, higher education didn’t make us better than anyone else. It made us more aware.

Aware of systems. Aware of cycles. Aware of trauma that was never named.

You start asking questions that make people uncomfortable. You stop tolerating behaviors you once normalized. You name harm where there used to be humor. And that can feel like betrayal to folks who benefited from your silence.

So instead of saying, “I don’t understand you,” or “I feel left behind,” they say:

“You think you know everything now.”

When the People You Grew Up With Don’t Clap

There’s a special kind of hurt when the people who watched you struggle don’t acknowledge how far you’ve come.

No congratulations. No reposts. No “I’m proud of you.”

Just distance. Or jokes. Or comparison.

Sometimes it’s because your success reminds them of dreams they had to put down. Sometimes it’s jealousy. Sometimes it’s simply that your growth no longer fits the version of you they’re comfortable with.

And that hurts, because you didn’t get educated to leave them. You got educated to survive.

Higher Education as a Black Woman Is Survival Work

For Black women, higher education is not just intellectual, it’s emotional labor.

You navigate microaggressions. You code-switch to be taken seriously. You prove yourself twice as much for half the grace.

You carry your family’s hopes, even when they don’t know how to hold the outcome.

So when someone minimizes that journey with a sarcastic line, it cuts deep. Not because you think you know everything, but because you know what it cost.

You Are Allowed to Be Proud Anyway

Let this be the reminder:

You are allowed to be proud, even if they don’t understand. You are allowed to evolve, even if it makes others uncomfortable. You are allowed to outgrow spaces that refuse to grow with you.

Your education didn’t make you distant. It made you discerning.

And if they say, “Since you got your degree and you know everything,” you don’t have to argue.

Sometimes the most powerful response is continuing to live well, speak freely, and stand firmly in who you’ve become.

Because you don’t know everything.

But you know yourself.

And that matters more than their approval.