I am nearly halfway finished with my graduate school degree. It has taken me quite a long time to get to this halfway point, taking only one course per semester. When I graduate, in about 1.5 years, I will have a degree in educational technology and course design. My path to get here is far from traditional, and while I never thought I would be a grad student while also taking care of two young kids, here we are!

Back in elementary school, some testing proclaimed that I was “advanced” and I was put into the gifted program. This involved missing a lot of gym class, which I loved, and a lot of recess, which I was bitter about. By the time I got to junior high, there were no longer math, science, and music classes available at my level, so I was sent to the high school across the street for part of the day. I was a 7th grader taking classes with 9th and 10th grade students, and I hated every minute of it. I did well academically, but suffered immensely in the social aspects of school. During this time, my parents also moved us across the country, and then back, within a three year period. By the time I was a junior in high school, I stopped caring. I was, quite frankly, a mess. I just barely graduated, and I didn’t even bother applying to any colleges, because it all seemed so complicated and over my head.

A few months after graduation, I decided to go to art school, got accepted, and moved to the city to start. I lasted one year, failed 75% of my classes, and moved back home. I went through a dozen classes at two community colleges, with no idea what I wanted to do. I moved to Los Angeles to go to makeup school, and while I love doing makeup, I hated making small talk with actors (I am borderline extreme shy and socially awkward, and should have considered this before trying to start a career in makeup!). Two more community colleges in LA followed. A few more classes. Still no direction. By this time I was teaching preschool, I was married, and I was worried that I would never have a career. I didn’t want to teach preschool forever, knowing that the pay would not be enough to help support a family in California.

When I was 28, with the support of my husband, I finally got my stuff together and decided to go back to school and get a real degree. I spent six months tracking down transcripts, resolving account holds and old fees, and applying to yet another community college. At that point, my GPA was somewhere around 1.2. It felt hopeless at times. Before I could even start this journey, there were so many obstacles. I had to retake classes I had failed a decade ago. The school I went to was an hour drive away, and I often would take the 90 minute train ride there to avoid the horrible parking situation. All of my time was devoted to working, or school, and I missed a lot of events and things with my friends during that time. Eventually, through a lot of hard work over a period of two years, I graduated with an AA degree in social and behavioral sciences, and even managed to graduate with honors. I was able to use a transfer program to get into the closest CSU school without actually having to apply, and I graduated with my bachelor’s in psychology two years later, when I was five months pregnant with Ace.

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I always knew that I wanted to go to grad school, but I put it on hold to have a baby. Then we moved states, and I felt overwhelmed, so I put it off another year. Finally, when Ace was 2, I started the application process, and ended up getting into an online program that would allow me to take only 1 or two classes a semester. And I’ve been doing that since! All throughout my pregnancy with Lou, and through her first year. Now that she is older and sleeping well, I am going to attempt to take two classes during Spring semester. I also do contract work, so many of my nights are spent furiously reading, writing, or editing as quietly as I possibly can in my house full of light sleepers.

When I am feeling particularly overwhelmed, I remind myself why I am doing this. On nights when I have two sick kids that need holding, a group project due that no one else seems to want to contribute to, seven loads of laundry spread around my living room, and a ten page paper due at 11:59PM, I think about how privileged I am to be able to do this. How proud I will be when I finish my degree, how proud my children will be (many) years from now when they understand what I am doing. I think about how I will be able to do something I love (course design) and hopefully make a career out of it. I think about the very lost and scared 18 year old me who had no clue what she was doing and no one to help her figure it out, and I hope that my experiences will give my children a different kind of future.

By the time I graduate, my kids will be 3 and 6, and we will be starting a new chapter of parenthood. I look forward to that time, while I am also trying to embrace and enjoy what we are doing now. And Mr. Jellyfish has already hinted that he would possibly like to get a second Master’s degree or a PHd, once I graduate. It looks like we will be doing the part time student, full time parent thing for quite some time.

Have you been in school while also parenting little ones? Sometimes I think it would have been much easier if I waited until my kids were in school, but I really wanted to get it finished as soon as possible. But if you are working on any sort of degree with little ones at home, you must know how hard it can be!