PATIENCE
PATIENCE “The lesson that I’ve taken away is that it isn’t wrong to say, ‘the slow one wins the race.’” If you take it slower, chances are everything plays out the way it should, so I like to follow that rule as much as possible in my life.”
BACK TO SCHOOL
“When I got accepted into pharmacy school, and I told her [my daughter], the first thing she said was, ‘I’m so proud of you, Mom,’ and so that’s all I needed to hear because the whole reason I’m doing it is so I can pay for her to go to college and to do things that I didn’t get to do.”
INSPIRATION
"I was kind of a broken kid at the time, so I wasn’t talkative at all. I was really quiet and to myself and my uncle knew that, but he brought me back here. My aunt and my little cousins were excited to see me with my broken tooth and big black eye.... But I was getting better. They were bringing me back to church, and I was realizing what Jesus had done for me—saved me off the streets, sent my aunt and uncle for me, and I regained that relationship with Him.”
BREAKING CYCLES
“You’re never too old to learn. Because I’m now 52, and I started this when I was 48. I’m grandmother of eight…and in me going to college now, I’m showing my grandchildren that, yes, college is important.”.
RESET
“One day, I was sitting at my computer desk, and I was like, ‘I’m really sick of being depressed,’ and that was that—like cold turkey, a complete 180.”
COMING BACK
“If you have a story, and you’re able to explain it and show that you’ve done something, then your grades—I mean they matter, but they don’t.”
Finding Home
“I spent the next year and a half attending school and living in a tent. I studied marine science—of course that’s what you study when you go to school in Hawaii.”