For Tara Perry, pencils no longer exist. Next to disappear will be every sunset, every mountain, every bird and every star she used to enjoy watching. Many are gone already.

Perry knew the day would come when the effects of retinitis pigmentosa -- a degenerative sight-loss disease that struck her at age 22 -- would finally catch up. But doctors said it would be years into the 21st century before she would even begin going blind.

Instead, it was three years later in August 1990, when she was working for her doctorate in recreation and parks at Penn State, that Perry began to experience significant sight loss, putting her dedication to the test -- a test she successfully passed 4 years later.

With her guide dog, Kelso, at her side, Perry was one of more than 200 graduate students who received degrees Saturday night before an applauding audience in Eisenhower Auditorium. About 3,800 students graduated Saturday from the University.

"My love of learning kept me from stopping," Perry explained, her Southern accent marked by the determination and confidence that helped her to complete her degree. "I somehow knew I would finish. I wanted to finish."

As she continued her studies, Perry's sight diminished to the point where she could read only one letter of a word at a time. She still has slight vision in her left eye, but that is also diminishing.

"When I first started reading, I felt illiterate," she said.

But Perry learned new ways to continue her education. Remarks written in pencil by her professors seemed invisible, so she began to send them thick, black felt-tipped pens to use. Note taking was replaced with tape recording; she used a cane and then later a guide dog to find her way around; she scanned pages into high-tech computers that could read the information to her aloud.

"She did it all on her own," said Ralph Smith, Perry's dissertation adviser and an associate professor of recreation and park management. "She's an extremely determined young woman."

Perry said it was not any special character traits that enabled her to earn her degree despite unanticipated challenges. Instead, she credits help and support from friends, family, University staff and faculty and the Sight-Loss Support Group of Central Pennsylvania Inc.

But Sight-Loss Support Group Executive Director Rana Arnold, who also has a degenerative eye disease, credits Perry with carving her own success. Many people suddenly experiencing sight loss are overwhelmed and need to take time off from their normal routines to adjust, she said.

"To hang in there when you're losing one of the most vital senses you have is, I think, just remarkable," Arnold said. "I don't think I could have done it."

Perry did not fight the disease. Instead, she learned to understand it, which kept it from interfering with her quest to earn her degree.

"You have to want something badly enough," Arnold said. "Tara has a lot of enthusiasm for life. She handled this extremely well."

Perry now teaches at the University of Mississippi and studies how disabilities affect children's leisure activity. Her struggle with sight loss brought deeper professional and personal meaning to her studies as her research became her own reality.

"I had to become my own best therapist," she said. "When it's your training, you ought to be able to do something about it."

And though Perry amazed some people by earning one doctoral degree, she said another one may be in her future. For now she plans to take events day by day, just as she learned to do when her sight loss began.

"I recognized as I continued to lose vision that it's just the little things," Perry said. "When I can see anything of a sunset, that thrills me."