One Degree Hotter: How Megan Thee Stallion Made Good on Her Promise to Graduate College

“Leave me alone right quick, y’all!” Megan Thee Stallion says playfully to her glam team.

It’s the day after the commencement ceremony at Texas Southern University in Houston, where the hometown hero and Grammy-winner just earned her Bachelor’s degree in Health Administration, just like she always said she would.

Shortly after our conversation on Zoom, Megan attended another ceremony, where she received the ​​18th Congressional District Humanitarian Award from Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. All in a weekend’s work for one of the hottest rappers in the world. 

Around the time when Megan Thee Stallion, born Megan Pete, came onto the scene, she was still an undergraduate at Prairie View A&M University, just outside of Houston. “I thought I wanted to be a nurse and then I found myself at school and I was like, okay, definitely don’t want to be a nurse,” she says. “I didn’t tell my parents I switched my major and then I started really rapping. I left Prairie View and I came home. I got a job, but I was still going to community colleges. Finally, I was like you know what? I need to go back on campus. So then that’s when I wound up at Texas Southern University.”

In 2019, she told  IndieLand that she hoped to use her degree to open assisted-living facilities in the city, a noble pursuit considering her resounding success in music. She’s also made a point to fund the higher education of other young women. That same year, she hosted a beauty pageant where the 23-year-old winner — crowned the “Cognac Queen,” after a song on Megan’s Tina Snow EP — earned a $2,500 scholarship prize. The following year, she offered two $10,000 scholarships for women of color and sponsored a full ride for a student to attend the Roc Nation School of Music, Sports & Entertainment at Long Island University this summer. 

She seems to have a bigger educational endeavor in the works. I ask her about a photograph of her with the US Secretary of Education that had begun to float around the internet, but she remains tight-lipped. “It was supposed to be a surprise,” says Megan. “I still don’t want to tell you what it was for.” In the meantime, you can help Texas Southern students like Megan cross the finish line by supporting a scholarship pool the University has set up to celebrate her: Thee Megan Fund. Read our conversation with the hot girl grad below.

Grammy-winning artists Megan Thee Stallion received her bachelor's degree in health administration from Texas Southern University on Saturday. https://t.co/Zr7mk8XVvC pic.twitter.com/CsQTcuxgya

— ABC News (@ABC) December 12, 2021

Megan, how do you feel? When we first hopped on this call, you said you were relieved.
I definitely feel super relieved because I feel like I’ve been at school for so long. When I got famous, I had to start taking two classes at a time. This last semester I was like, okay, just give me a full class load because I want to be done. I want to be out of here. And now I’m like, yes, I did it. I can’t believe it. I’m really a college graduate, so I feel good.

How many classes was a full load for you this past semester?
Five classes.

Lord, I took four classes at a time in school and that was hard.
I just wanted to be done. I wanted to get out of there. I kept asking my Dean. I was like, “What do I have to do to just be finished?” She was like, “Okay, Megan, you really going to have to buckle down and these are the last classes that you have to take.”

How did you have to adjust to that workload? Did you have to change anything about your schedule or your life in order to accommodate the five classes?
Every time I had an assignment or something due, one of my managers would just pull me to the side and be like, “Hey Megan, you know you got to do this presentation today.” Or “Hey Megan, you know you got to turn this assignment in today.” They would just come up on me at random times telling me what I had to do. It’s probably good it worked out like that because I don’t like feeling like, oh my gosh, I have to do this, I have to do that. Just spring it on me. I would have not been successful this semester without my team.

What would you say was the most rewarding part of this college experience for you?
I definitely feel like it taught me focus. I feel like it taught me discipline and I met some of my best friends at college. The girls that I met when I was a freshman, I’m still best friends with them to this day. They’re like my sisters.

How did you celebrate yesterday?
We went to dinner and we just had a little party at the restaurant and I went to my uncle’s house and I had a party with my family. It was just turnt up the whole day.

Where did y’all go to eat?
Del Frisco’s. I love Del Frisco’s. 

So out to dinner, was that with your friends and then the party at your uncle’s was a family party?
Right, so directly after graduation, my family went to my uncle’s house and we partied over there for a little bit. My friends came over there too, but then I wanted to have a separate turn up just for my friends because it was going to get a little ratchet, so we just took it to dinner.

Your cake was so cute.
I know. I was crying.

Who got you the cake?
D’usse bought me a cake and then some Hotties brought me a cake when I was at school. I invited some Hotties to my graduation, so they got me a really nice cake.

How many fans did you invite?
25? Yeah, it was like 25 of them. It was Hotties that I recognized from Twitter and Instagram. They’re always saying such nice and positive things, so I’m like, y’all should definitely come experience this with me today because y’all have been day ones.

Your school has established a scholarship fund in your name. That’s awesome. Was your administration at Texas Southern always very supportive of you?
For a little while they didn’t know I was a rapper until one day I came and I was like, “I think I’m about to go on tour, so is it a way I could continue my degree online? What can I do?” And they were like, what are you talking about? I finally told them everything I had going on and they saw it for themselves and they were like, “Oh wow. Well, we do offer these courses online.” The whole time with that, they were super supportive. My Dean, Dr. Rasmus, she was on my butt all the time like an aunt: “You need to do this, make sure you’re doing that.” She definitely helped me throughout the whole way.

What are your future plans with your degree now?
I’m still going to open up these assisted living facilities and I definitely want to hire new college graduates. Nobody ever wants to hire you fresh out of college. They feel like you have no experience, so I want to create a place where you can get experience.

What would you say, aside from being a superstar while trying to get your degree, was the most challenging thing about your experience in college?
The most challenging thing about college was definitely staying motivated to finish because I was going through so many things and sometimes I’ll just be like, man, forget all this. I just want to go hide in the corner. I’m stressed. But I still kept my mom and my grandmother at the back of my mind. Before they passed away, they saw me going to college and they were really hard on me about finishing college, so I was like, you know what? I’m not just doing it for myself, I’m doing it for them too. I want them to be so proud.