There are two times in my life that I can remember dealing with a great deal of adversity. They both involved difficulty in completing my degree and they both included my mother. The first one was when I moved my mother to the college town where I was living because she was homeless, jobless, and undergoing experimental treatment to cure her Hepatitis B infection. During that time, I was going to school full-time as well as working part-time to try and pay the rent and have money for food and utilities. I was not always successful and often struggled to figure out meals for the day. I remember how shameful I felt when I was stuffing toilet paper in my backpack from a campus bathroom to take home for my mother and me to use. During this time, my grades began to suffer, and by the time my senior year was over, my grade point average had dropped, and I decided to leave the school. I used to consider that the most difficult time of my life. But the most difficult time of my life was from April 2019 to September 2020. In April 2019, my mother found out her liver transplant occurred too late, and cancer from her old liver had escaped. This time around, the cancer was more aggressive due to the immunosuppressant drugs she was taking to keep her body from rejecting her new liver. Throughout that year and a half, I was not in denial, and neither was my mother. We were open and talked about her imminent death and made legal plans for her in the case that she was incapacitated. It was hard but dealing with it head-on made it a little better. Watching my mother go through changes, deal with pain, and toward the end, eating less and less was heart-wrenching. I started therapy months before her death to help me through the grieving process. It was difficult to manage her pain and other symptoms. Once a week I would sit with her pillbox and distribute her pills with caution and with a heavy heart. Every week that passed was more difficult than the last as she ate less than the week before. Each time the nurse, the doctor, or the social worker came to the house, my heart became heavier I knew it was step closer to her imminent death. But I tried to make it as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. The COVID pandemic afforded me extra time home to spend with my mother. My nieces and nephews came over and my mother would have a big smile on her face every time. In that time, I enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program in human services, and I hoped I would have the strength to continue throughout my mom’s illness. A year after her death, I am happy to say that I have continued strongly, and I have a year to a year and a half left before I complete my degree. I think the death of my mother has motivated me further to complete my degree. Not only am I doing it for myself, but I am doing it for her. For pride, but also because she never earned a degree for herself, and she did not get to see me graduate from college. I hope she will be watching from above next year when I do earn my degree.

My mother was born in Puerto Rico and my father was born in Pakistan. They both came to the continental United States with little resources and very little education to help them succeed. My parents separated before I could remember due to extreme cultural differences, and I was the person to feel the effects of their divorce, even now at 36 years old. I am working on completing my bachelor's degree and this is my 3rd attempt. I maxed out on student loans and I am not paying out of pocket to try and complete my degree. This attempt began last year while my mother had begun hospice and palliative care. She passed away in September 2020 and I am now more determined than ever to complete my degree, for myself but for her too. My mother did not finish high school, but received her GED diploma. My father began working at 8 years old and left Pakistan on food with only a few dollars in his pocket. He made his way through western Asian and through Europe, finally making it to Mexico before entering the United States a few years later. The first thing he saw when he hopped out of the trunk of the car was a big sign that said, "Taco Bell". He was fortunate enough to continue gaining experience in construction and eventually started his own construction/roofing company. I am not sure if it was the cultural difference or because I was not a full Pakistani and lived with my mother, but my father never offered to help me with my tuition. Because of my parents' inability or want to help me with my tuition over the years, and because I had to take care of my mother during my first attempt at college due to her undergoing experimental treatment for Hepatitis C (it was never cured and the infection eventually caused cancer, which ultimately took her life), I was never financially secure and could not only focus on my education. Now that I am working two jobs, full-time and part-time, I am able to pay for a state school out of pocket while attending school part-time online. I am studying human services and I hope to continue helping people with developmental disabilities in a more profound, impactful way. This scholarship would help me pay tuition for almost two courses. I hope to graduate by the end of 2022, 20 years after I first started my journey in completing my bachelors degree.