The Day I Took My Licensure Exam and Nothing Happened

For years, I was sold a story about licensure. Professors talked about it like a finish line. Once you’re licensed, they said, you can go into private practice. You’ll make good money. You’ll work fewer hours. You’ll have balance. You’ll have Fridays at the spa. And as I look back now, for many of them, that was their truth. This was their second or third career. They already had financial stability, life experience, and a safety net beneath them. I was one of the few students who went straight from college into graduate school. For me, licensure wasn’t a capstone. It was supposed to be the beginning. In my mind, licensure meant confetti. Fireworks. Maybe even a band playing in the background. I imagined an easier life. I imagined validating clients and holding their trauma without carrying my own financial debt, without working jobs that traumatized me, without sacrificing the values that mattered most to me like family time and rest.

The day I took the exam did not match that fantasy.

It was a sunny afternoon when I drove to a random strip mall in Allentown using MapQuest. No recognizable anchor stores. Nothing memorable. Inside was a tutoring office filled with cubicles with half walls and people taking all kinds of exams at the same time. There was nothing ceremonial about it. No acknowledgment of what it took to get there. Just process.

I walked in ready. I had rehearsed for hours writing out my study guide from memory. I expected to be given paper. I had prepared for paper. Instead, I was handed one double sided laminated pink graph sheet and a dry erase marker. That was it. Everything I had practiced evaporated in an instant. I don’t remember much about my body in that moment. Probably dissociation. I do remember realizing very quickly that the plan had changed.

So I pivoted. I stopped trying to recreate the page and instead pictured it in my mind. The handwriting. The spacing. The sections. I trusted that the work I had done was already in me.

I rushed out when it was over and called my study buddy from the car, data dumping every question I could remember for her benefit. I had no idea how I did. No sense of relief. No confidence. Just a strange, empty feeling. I expected something to happen when I finished. Some internal shift. Some signal that I had arrived. Nothing happened.

The waiting afterward felt endless. Weeks stretched on because I didn’t know if I passed or failed. I job searched constantly, assuming licensure would open doors. I was desperate for what I called a sweater job. A job where I wasn’t a beginner. A job with a predictable schedule. No on call. No giving up my life for work. A job where I could wear wool and not absorb other people’s dinner smells or household chaos. I wanted professionalism. Distance. Stability.

When I finally learned that I passed, there was another delay. Too much time had passed between filing my paperwork, scheduling the exam, taking it, and the board meeting. I had to resubmit everything. From application to actually receiving my license, nine months passed. Nine months of waiting for something I believed would change everything.

And then it didn’t.

Licensure is often considered the gold standard in the profession, but it is also an expectation. Not a celebration. Much like graduating high school in some cultures, it is assumed you will do it. It is not something people stop to congratulate. Employers did not suddenly offer better pay or better hours. The field did not treat it like a milestone. I was able to sublet office space and technically start my own practice, but real life was happening at the same time. I needed health insurance. I was getting married. Financial reality mattered more than fantasy.

Licensure reminded me of getting married after already living together. You plan a wedding. You imagine the meaning, the shift, the transformation. You celebrate, go on a honeymoon, and then you come home to the same house you left as fiancés. Same routines. Same responsibilities. The only thing that has changed is the legal status and the paperwork. The marriage still needs tending. The relationship still requires work. Licensure was like that. I focused on the wedding, not the marriage. I was studying theories and frameworks instead of honing my clinical skills, building endurance, and learning how to sustain a career over time.

No one prepared me for what private practice actually requires. Not just clinical skill, but business skill. You are not only a therapist. You are a business owner. A marketer with a plan. A social media manager. A networker. An office filing clerk. A scheduler. A billing department. You need to be resourced enough to sustain yourself and your family long before the business can sustain you. It is a gamble with layers, and support is not optional if you want it to work.

Looking back, I realize how focused I was on the wedding and not the marriage. I was studying theories, not honing clinical skill. I was memorizing frameworks, not learning how to sit with uncertainty, build endurance, or sustain a career over time. Licensure did not make me an expert. It made me legal.

Fourteen years later, I understand that licensure was never meant to be the fireworks. It was meant to be the doorway. The moment you’re allowed to begin doing the real work. It doesn’t make you an expert overnight. It doesn’t guarantee ease or balance or financial security. It simply gives you permission to start building something that lasts.

And maybe that’s where we miss an opportunity.

We wait for institutions to celebrate us instead of marking our own milestones. We compare our paths to people who started later, had different safety nets, or entered the profession at a different stage of life. We tell ourselves it doesn’t count if it isn’t loud or public or traditional.

But milestones matter even when they’re quiet. Especially when they’re quiet.

Passing an exam in a strip mall on a sunny afternoon counts. Subletting an office instead of owning one counts. Building skill before comfort counts. Learning how to learn, how to pivot, and how to stay aligned with your values counts.

Licensure doesn’t have to be the finish line for it to be worth celebrating. It can be a marker along the way. A pause to acknowledge what it took to get there and what you’re choosing to build next.

If you’re chasing a finish line, I hope this story gives you permission to ask what you’re actually running toward. And if you’re in the in-between, waiting for something to feel different, know this: your work still matters. Your growth still counts. And you’re allowed to celebrate your milestones even if they don’t look like anyone else’s.