Ke’Yonna Hall recently graduated with a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Texas at Arlington, a feat she credits to her two toddlers. Merging parenthood with education and a career can be tricky, but the proud mother insists that she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Her journey began three years ago when she broke her relationship with her children’s father due to adultery. Co-parenting also failed, so she rolled up her sleeves and embraced single parenthood. She still desired to pursue her master’s degree.
She told Business Insider, “As a first-generation high school and college graduate, I knew obtaining another degree would be challenging. However I didn’t realize how different those challenges would be in my present reality.”
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While some urged her to pursue it and questioned how she would find a balance, others reminded her of her parental obligations and advised her to wait until her boys were old enough to attend school.
Not wanting to waste time and hoping to be an inspiration to her kids one day, Hall speared forward with her educational ambitions when her eldest was 15 months old, and her youngest was just 3 months old.
She recounted, “Balancing my career in political organizing with late-night assignments, mandatory practicums for my MSW, and early mornings of Pixar’s “Finding Dory” was challenging. Still, those precious moments of mimicking the whale sounds made by Dory with my children fueled my determination.”
She persevered through sleepless nights and exhausting days, working while her kids slept and setting aside time throughout the day to attend to client updates and business calls.
She spoke of how her boys would assist her with tasks such as carrying in groceries and placing drinks in the refrigerator when online deliveries arrived, loading and unloading the laundry on Tuesdays, and gathering their own toys and putting them away when not in use.
The family of three often sang nursery rhymes together until the boys fell asleep, at which point the studious mother would return to study her courses and write to stay on track.
With Hall being named one of 17 exceptional students in a graduating class of more than 200, the family has every cause to celebrate the “honor,” in Hall’s words.
Above all, she does, however, express her pride in the fact that “my sons are polite and mannerable.”
“At ages 2 and 3, they can identify most of the alphabet, count and identify numbers beyond 20, recognize primary colors and shapes, know the careers of people in their neighborhood, their names, my name, our address, and more,” Hall said.
She added, “For us, this degree represents countless nights balancing deadlines with their growth and development milestones — from first steps to first assessments, from my endless chapters of reading to their bedtime stories, from practicum hours to scheduled playdates. We made it work.”
