{Fearless Friday} There’s No Excuse – Get That Degree

Last week I went to Worthington, Ohio (let’s just call it Columbus) for the Student-Parent Support Symposium, hosted by Ohio State University.

The goal was to bring together all the representatives of student-parent programs at colleges and universities and share what they’re doing to help students.

I thought I had done some research and knew about programs all around the country. But truthfully, what I knew only scratched the surface.

Let’s start with the host, shall we? Ohio State has the ACCESS program for young, single moms. As part of the program, the students get to participate in workshops, live in family housing, get help with childcare, group therapy, and more. I met a few girls from the program and their eyes lit up at the mere mention of it.

Because they all live together in the on-campus apartments, they’ve become a family, which is probably the best benefit of all. They have each other to lean on, arranging childcare among themselves if an emergency arises, or if they just want to hang out, carefree for a while.

Another program that blew me away was the Sitters for Service program at the University at Alabama. Get this: Student-parents at the UofA sign up for a lottery in which they will receive up to 20 hours of free babysitting each semester. They can use those 20 hours to do anything they chose – go to the movies, run errands, handle an unexpected emergency, go work out. (They do frown on using those hours to go get drunk at the bar, though.) Basically, UofA students sign up to be babysitters, and the hours they work count toward their community service hours. It’s a win-win for all involved.

I was in another session with representatives from the Higher Education Alliance for Residential Single-Parent Programs (what a mouthful!). They each gave an overview of their programs and my mouth was almost on the floor when some of them were being described.

Take Berea College, for example. This small college in Kentucky had a list of support a mile long. Single and married parents have the opportunity to live in the EcoVillage, a cluster of new 1,2, and 3-bedrooms apartments (built in 2003). Tuition is free at Berea College, since it serves a low-income population and each student gets a PC when they arrive. There are parenting classes and support groups, AND the students in the parenting program have access to a Prius if they don’t have a car and need to run errands.PLUS, the child development lab on campus takes children from six weeks to five years. You may not realize how huge that is, but it’s incredible. The childcare center at my school only took kids 18 months and older, so you can imagine how frustrating it was having a newborn and passing up the most convenient daycare every day on the way to class.

I write all this to say that there are colleges that recognize young parents and our desire to get an education. If you are currently on the fence about whether to go back to school – let this be the sign you need to go do it.

Find out about the resources available to you here and here.

How many of you have been in college and pregnant? Were your professors helpful and understanding? How did you make it work as you got closer to delivery? Did your school have any special support for student-parents? Share your experiences below!