Recently, Leah Remini has shown that she has a lot to celebrate and be thankful for, including having just finished her first set of final exams in her post-secondary career at New York University.
The 51-year-old King of Queens actress marked the occasion in a Twitter post, which also discussed the fact that she previously only had "an 8th grade education."
The tweet, which was posted Saturday May 7, marks the end of her very fist semester as a student at NYU. But she also mentions how she'd spent much of her life as part of a cult.
PopCulture reports that, since her 2013 departure of the church, Remini has been critical of its practices, oftentimes referring to it as a cult who "didn't value an education."
She's written a memoir and made a docu-series about her upbringing in the Church called Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. Growing up in Scientology, she'd been taken out of school at age 13.
Last spring, Remini posted a screenshot of her college acceptance letter, accompanied by a lengthy post expressing her excitement.
"This is one of the last chunks of my life that I am taking back for myself from Scientology," she wrote.
"...for fear that I was not smart enough, not worthy enough, not able to do the work that will be required, my age...." she continues in the post.
"I am ready to do the work... I am excited to start on my journey. It’s just never too late is it?"
"It's been difficult when I'm working because sometimes I'll work from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. and then have to come home and read chapters and do a quiz when my brain is shutting down," she told People.
"But I'm doing it, and I am proud of myself. With my degree, I might eventually want to go into politics, but who knows? I would like to be of some kind of public service."
Whether you start post-secondary education at 18 or you don't get to it until you're in your 50s, it's going to be exciting, challenging, stressful, and rewarding all at the same time.
With one year of her associate's degree in liberal arts down, she's one step closer to achieving the level of education she'd dreamed about as a child and as an adult.
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