Moms achieve academic success while parenting,

Many find determination key to successful academic journey

When Ayana Clark gave birth to her second child, Ja’dyn, there was no time for an extended time to stay home. She returned to school as soon as she could.

When she graduated with her master’s degree, she had a 3.8 GPA.

“I’m entirely too stubborn to fail,” said Clark, 24. “I was not just determination, but my personal stubbornness where other people can’t be right.”

On Mother’s Day, some of that determination might be on her mind.

Her own mother and grandmother set the example, each with master’s degrees, Clark said. Finishing her own meant overcoming the lack of childcare on the Purdue Northwest campus or stressful deadlines.

“There is a stigma placed on young moms, especially young, unmarried moms that you can’t be successful,” Clark said. “You have to choose one or the other -you have to work, or you have to take care of the kids. ... I think that all three of us are living proof that you can.”

While working and raising young children, she and friends Julia Cook-Jones and Aliya Adams have encouraged each other to stop at nothing to earn their degrees.

Clark and Cook-Jones, 22, graduated this month. Adams is set to graduate next spring with a bachelor’s degree in Science with a concentration in forensics.

Cook-Jones and Adams met as freshman at Morton High School in Hammond.

Years later, when CookJones, a communications major, discovered she was pregnant at 21 with her son Jace, 1, both Adams and Clark said things were going to be hard.

Adams said she was pregnant at 17, while still in high school.

She and Cook-Jones were awarded 21st Century scholarships, which gives a fouryear tuition-free scholarship to an in-state public college for promising 7th and 8th graders that meet income qualifications. It was an investment in both of them, Cook-Jones said, graduating with a 3.48 GPA.

Worried about how to manage a baby and college, Adams still signed up for classes. Her daughter, Ameah, was 4 months old when she started.

“At that time, she was still waking up in the middle of the night,” said Adams, now 21. “I’d have her in my arms the entire time I was studying.”

This semester, she posted her grades on social media: 5 As in chemistry and biochemistry classes and a B+ in Human Forensic Genetics. She has a 3.3 GPA so far.

Cook-Jones plans one day to setup a non-profit. All three soon plan to start a podcast, occasionally touching on juggling parenting and college.

The past five years “have been the hardest moments of my life,” Adams, 21, said. “At the end of the day, I would come home. (My daughter) kinda just lit up that spark in me.”