Mother of Six - Personal Essay

I am a 41-year-old single mother of two sons and four daughters and I am currently enrolled at Heald College in Hayward, Calif, as a full-time college student. I have overcome many obstacles in my life and beat many odds. I am now able to tell people who I am and the things that I am doing and the decisions that I had to make and be proud of what I have accomplished so far. The things I have been through have turned me from a person that is willing to give up easily and say I can't do it to a person that is strong-minded and willing to fight and never give up. I was able to see what my future would be like if I didn't make the changes that needed to be made and it scared me enough to step forward and do what had to be done for the sake of my children and most importantly, myself. As a teenager I took school for granted, and never realized how important an education was. I started having children at a really young age, I also got married. By the time I was 29 I had four children. And then soon after I was going through a horrible divorce. So from being happily married and having four perfect children, I was back at home with my parents. Now, a single mother, and I did not have a stable environment for my children. We all shared one bedroom. Things got a little better as time went by. I met the father of my two youngest girls now six and three, and my children and me moved with him in his house in Fremont. The kids all went to school there and played all of their sports. They loved it. We lived in Fremont for about eight years. I knew it was too good to be true; I was going through another separation, and again nowhere to go, and this time with six children. I moved back with parents again, and applied for welfare and food stamps. I did not know what I was going to. How was I supposed to get a job? After a year went by, I knew that I could not keep going like this... That is when I decided that I needed to take control of my life, pull myself together, and make a change in my life that is going to benefit me and my children for the rest of our lives. I enrolled at Heald College in Hayward, in October 2009. I chose the Dental field because this was a field that I was very familiar with, and being that my age plays a big factor with my decision-making, I could make this work. Time flew by in school. I love school; I maintained a 4.0 throughout my whole two years there. I am a member of the Phi Theta Kappa, and received a few awards for outstanding and motivated assistant. I started to feel a little sad and depressed when I knew that it was almost over, and I was almost done with my program. I did not want that, I wanted to continue with my education, so here I am, I enrolled again to finish these two quarters and get my AA. I also am enrolling in the Dental Hygiene program as soon as I receive my AA degree.

I'm still not out of the woods as far as my finances go. I still live with my children at my parent's house; I'm