<p>I left home when I was 17 due to abuse, and had to miss a great deal of my senior year. I did graduate because I came in to take my exams at the last minute. A couple of years later, I was a cashier with a baby, leaving a relationship of violence again.</p>
<p>I started college when I was 20 and had a 10 month old baby. I had no family support and I was on welfare, living in an inner city cheap apartment, with no car.</p>
<p>I started at the community college because I did not have confidence in my abilities, and because they had daycare at the campus. I took the bus with my baby, stroller, diaper bag, etc..</p>
<p>I soon realized that I was no moron.... I decided to major in business, because my sole focus was on the highest paying job out of school.</p>
<p>Two years later, I graduated with a 3.98 and 5 scholarships to the University's Business/Accounting program. I was admitted to the EOP program because I was poor and because my high school grades had been in the high 80's. But because of my community college GPA, I was also one of the only transfer students that year to win a spot in the Honors Program! That had never happened before -- EOP and Honors.</p>
<p>I did not get to reap the benefits of the Honors Program's special housing, because campus housing was not meant to house a baby. No matter, I had a cheap apartment. But I did have to get a car. In comes student loans. </p>
<p>I enrolled my daughter, who was then about 2.5 years old, in on site daycare center. At the end of 2 years, I had my BS in Accounting with about a 3.43 GPA. </p>
<p>I went and looked for jobs, and was offered $7 an hour! That would have meant food stamps and Medicaid indefinitely. </p>
<p>So I applied to law school and management school. Although I had daycare, and my child was actually getting ready to go to school, I knew that I needed my mom sometimes when she got sick. So the local university was my only option. I actually got waitlisted at the law school, but never one to be deterred, I appealed to the Dean, who was also a single mom. I was ultimately accepted for a joint JD/MBA degree.</p>
<p>I finished law school when my daughter was 7.5 years old, and I married a man that I had met my first year of law school about 6 months later.</p>
<p>There were still bumps in the road. I got pregnant right out of law school and the baby needed a lot of care, he just was too sick in daycare. So I started my own legal research company. I also went through difficulty trying to pass the bar with the struggles of the children and running a new business. </p>
<p>However, I was very good at what I did. By the time that I was admitted, I had such a reputation for writing winning motions and briefs that I could have worked at any firm in my city. I tried the big firm life, but I had not worked so hard to have to slave for 70 hours and never see my kids.</p>
<p>Additionally, my husband got cancer, and this caused me to seriously think of the kind of life that we needed to have.</p>
<p>I now work from a home office, and while I do not have the income that I desire, I do enjoy what I do, and I am able to also be there for my children and husband. </p>
<p>One thing that I have always said --- having my daughter saved my life. My mother stayed in a violent relationship with my father and it drove me from home. (Although she did leave my father a few weeks later). Loneliness and low self-esteem led me into the arms of a young man who then abused me. I did not love myself enough to leave that violent relationship, I had begun to believe that "it must be me". But when I had my child, I loved her enough to know that I could not choose that life for her. And so I threw him out, enrolled in college, and never looked back. </p>
<p>Today, she is a beautiful young woman, now applying to college herself.</p>