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Narrator

The following is a Towson University podcast.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Parenthood is life changing. I think most parents would agree that when you have a child, just about everything in your life changes. When you wake up, when you sleep, when and what you eat, how you spend money, and most importantly, how you spend your time. I'm your host Steph Sundermann-Zinger, and you're listening to Three Degrees, a podcast for people who are curious about the grad school experience.

In this episode, we chat with three students who didn't let parenthood stop them from pursuing graduate school - although in many ways, it has changed the way they're experiencing student life. First, we spoke with Ahmed. He has four kids and he adores them.

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Ahmed

So, I have a seven year old girl. I have an 11 year old girl. I have a 13 year old daughter and my son actually is 22 years old, and he's actually a sophomore here at Towson. Yeah, in computer science.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Tell me a little bit about your kids. What are they like?

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Ahmed

My kids are awesome. I feel like I always tell everyone. You know, when you have kids, life changes and things become, clearer, and I feel like I’ve been blessed.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Ahmed never planned to go for a graduate degree. He was happy with his bachelor’s, he had a good job, and things were going pretty well for him. When he decided he wanted to pursue his master's degree in Geography and Environmental Planning, though his first step was to solve a massive geographical problem. Ahmed is Sudanese, and he and his family were living in Uganda. The program he wanted to enter was in the United States.

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Ahmed

My whole family is American, so they didn't have a problem. Me being non-American was difficult. And I do also want to add that I am Sudanese and Sudan is listed as a state terrorist, you know, country. So it's really difficult. And it's one of those things where every time I come to the U.S., it's like, I already know, coming to the airport, I know I'm going to get pulled over for the random search.

And, and, you know, hey, we have to do an extra level of due diligence to make sure that you're not a terrorist or you're not someone who's not supposed to be in the country. And what makes it a bit more complicated is the fact that, Covid was happening and we were living in Uganda. There was a huge backlog at the American embassy.

So what I did is, is I applied, you know, for a visa in Uganda where I was living and in my home country of Sudan and the American embassy in Uganda kept telling me, “Hey, we don't have any visa appointment dates. You know, you have to wait a year and a half, two years.” And then suddenly the American embassy in Sudan, you know, wrote to me out of nowhere and they were like, hey, we see you've applied come to Sudan for a visa interview.

So then I travel to Sudan and I did get the visa. But when I did travel to Sudan, I had in mind that if I did get the visa, I would come straight to the U.S. because at the time there was an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. If you've been in a country that has Ebola, you'd have to be, uh, in a non Ebola country for 30 days.

So I had to leave my family, um, not knowing if I would get the visa or not. And also the fact that we're not from Uganda, having to close down the whole house. So I left all of that for them in Uganda. I came to Sudan and luckily I did get the visa.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

How long did it take before your family got here?

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Ahmed

So my family actually got here before me. They got here like two days before I did and we were reunited here, but I still was away from them for a month, which was is it was tough.

00:03:29:05 - 00:03:36:21

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Ahmed’s kids are American, but they grew up in Uganda, which meant they had to acclimate to American culture, which turned out to be a pretty big adjustment.

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Ahmed

I feel like back home you have this, um, support network where it's like, everybody has a nanny, everybody has a driver, everybody has a gardener. Like, I had so many, but everybody has a cook. And then now to come and it's like you wash your own dishes, you have to cook. I have to do all the drop offs and pickups, not only for school, but then also for like ballet and gymnastics and dance.

Yeah. So it's just a lot. So you've just really had to, like, manage time better and actually just realize that, you know, you just do your best and you can't be perfect. Like, I would like lose my mind, like when I first got here, it's like, oh, you missed the class. What's wrong with you? I think you miss, but it's like, you know, you just do your best. You can't control traffic. You can't control what happens on a daily basis.

00:04:23:05 - 00:04:32:19

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Ahmed and his family came to the U.S. in 2022, when Covid was still shifting a lot of courses online. With young kids at home, this was sometimes challenging.

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Ahmed

Yeah, I think I told you this, um, example of of, you know, having one of my online classes and trying to blur my background. But then at the back, my kids are doing gymnastics, my two younger daughters, and like one of them, like, fell and knocked stuff over. And it's like, what are you guys doing? Do you not see what? And it's, I just thought that was funny because it's like kids are hilarious. It's like they have the whole house. They can go outside. They can, but they want to do that thing right there in front of you and like, you know, distract you when you're doing something really important. So I think that was like one moment that really stood out. And at the moment it was like I was really pissed off. But like later on, it was funny.

00:05:15:28 - 00:05:22:17

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Ultimately, Ahmed has been able to successfully navigate the challenges of his dual identities as father and student. And while he loves his graduate program, he says it's helped him to get very clear about his priorities.

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Ahmed

I think that one thing that I have learned, I would say over the last two years, is that your kids are the most important thing, or for me, the kids. My kids are the most important thing in my life. And that's not to say like, hey, drop everything else and just, you know, focus on your kids. But I feel like when you make your children your priority in life, everything falls into place.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

For many parents, kids are the top priority, but they're also a lot of work. And it can be tough to meet all their needs while still being a successful student and professional. This is Chrissy. She and her husband have a two-year-old daughter, they both work full time, and Chrissy is in grad school. And as they work to keep their daughter's needs front and center in their lives, they've learned to lean on their community a lot.

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Chrissy

My husband, like, had more of like, a hard time growing up. He grew up with a single mother, um, would have basically been living in poverty if it wasn't for the his dad that helped raise him. And so I think a lot of his upbringing, which he's really instilled in me, is like the importance of community and how like you lean on others when you need support. And that's something that I think, like, I'm I'm a very independent person and I'm like, no, I don't need anybody. Like, I've got all of this, like on my own. But being with him and seeing the importance of community and, and utilizing that has really shown me that, like, together we are able to achieve so much more together for ourselves, our organizations, now our family, than I would have ever been able to do on my own. I found out that I was pregnant in October of 2023, and I started my grad program that following January. Um, so I had already applied to the program when I had found out that I was pregnant. Granted, this was all part of my master plan about how I can do everything. Sure. Why not? You know, be pregnant and start a master's program and go on maternity leave and have a three month old like that shouldn't be hard is kind of what I was telling myself. Uh, yeah. It turned out, you know, sometimes true, sometimes not true.

00:07:38:18 - 00:07:52:04

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Chrissy was thriving in her role as a driven, high achieving professional. That didn't change when her baby was born, and neither did the number of hours in a day. Plus, she found her priorities were shifting to make more room for her growing family.

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Chrissy

Before having a, a daughter, when it was just me and my husband, like, we would both not necessarily put work above us, but like work with something that we did right, like it was we would eat dinner together, we would go on a walk after dinner, and then most of the time, like we would both like log on and finish whatever we, we wanted to do, uh, for work. But now there's so much more, I think, like intentionality about making sure that we carve out time for us, making sure that we carve out time for our daughter, making sure that we carve out time for our friends and our family. And I think a lot of times, like it ends up being maybe less actual time that we want it to be, or that we would hope for, but because we're being more intentional about the time that we're spending, and the kind of the value of the time is greater, I think, like one of the things that I like to like, kind of think about about how, like when you're juggling everything is that like you have both glass balls and rubber balls, and the glass balls are things that like, if you were to drop, they shatter, whereas rubber balls are things like, yeah, sure, you might drop them, but they'll bounce back up. And for me, like that's kind of like how I like try to prioritize. Like what are things that like I cannot drop and what are things that, you know, it's okay if like, you let that person down or that person's like frustrated or oh, they have to wait an extra day for a response. For example, there was one time, my daughter had like just start - I had just gone back to work. And I was in the grad program and, we got a call from daycare and she had hand, foot, mouth. And at that point, for me, that was a glass ball. I couldn't drop that. I had to go immediately to daycare, take her to the doctor, pick her up. But that meant that, like, work. Yeah, sure. It'll be there. It'll bounce back. School work, yeah, sure. Maybe if I needed an extension, like, you know, I could reach out to a professor and ask for that.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Some days, Chrissy and her husband can keep all their glass balls in the air. Other days, they need a little help. That's where their community comes in.

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Chrissy

My husband and I talk about like, oh, my gosh, like, this is, this is a lot, and it's a lot on him too, right? Because like, then he becomes the parent on the nights that I have class. But he's also a CPA. And so that means that during the months of January to April, he's working like 60, 70 plus hours a week. So what does that mean? Oftentimes we have to use our community. For us is really in the form of his mom. So my mother-in-law and my sister. And I think for a lot of parents, like they might feel guilty about taking that time, about being like, hey, look, like I know that my husband has a demanding career, but that doesn't mean that I can't do something that is like fulfilling for me either.

I like to think about it as the time that my daughter is like spending away from us with other people in our in our village, if you will. Is that, like she's getting to build those bonds with those people. And I can just see the amount of joy that my mother-in-law has when like the nights when it's just her and, and my daughter Sophie. Or when my sister, who has three boys, gets to play, like with the little girl who, like, wants to do things a little bit more like gentle and daintily. And so for me, like it's it's just like I'm being able to create space for other people to build strong bonds with my daughter, while I'm able to then kind of like, not feel that guilt about, hey, like on Tuesdays and Thursdays or Tuesdays and Wednesdays or whatever nights that I have class, like I can be fully present in class and build relationships outside.

00:11:18:13 - 00:11:26:26

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Asking for help hasn't always been easy for Chrissy. But she's learned to accept it and even embrace it as a necessary part of her graduate school experience.

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Chrissy

Yeah, I think the, the, the biggest lesson is that, like, you can't do it all to the level that you want to do it. I have struggled with that. I hate asking other people to help.

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Chrissy

I hate doing like, feeling like a burden on other people. Uh, but I've learned that, like, most of the time, people are more than happy to kind of be reached out to and be like, hey, like, I would love to spend, you know, 2 or 3 hours with your daughter. Or, hey, like, I would love to, you know, take your daughter out of the house while I, whatever, work on an assignment or, orthat kind of thing. And so I've really learned to lean on other people as much as I might still be reluctant to do it. Um, I do know that, like, it one helps me. It helps them. My daughter loves to kind of, like, get a change of scenery. And it just all around is, is better for, for all of us.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

A strong community and a supportive partner are making Chrissy’s experience attending grad school as a parent much easier. But what happens when you don't have that support? This is Christina. She's a teacher, she has three kids ranging in age from 15 to 20, and she made the decision to delay graduate school in order to focus on her family.

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Christina

Graduate school came later for me after I, homeschooled my children, raised them, stayed home with them, supported my partner's career. Sort of in a corporate wife capacity. And by the time my children were about 12, 10 and I think 8 somewhere in that range, I might be a little off on those dates. I decided to send them to school.

And at that time, I went back to graduate school for my master's of arts in teaching. My kids were supportive. I mean, they were younger and about the age where they really, you know, believe in you. And they're they're, you're kind of their hero. Um, you know, if they were older teens, you know, I don't know if they would have had the same reaction. But, when they were that age, they were all about it, you know, they're like, yeah, mom, you're, you're smart. You're, you can do this. You know, they believed in me and they're still proud of me.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Delaying grad school wasn't always the plan. In fact, Christina originally intended to go straight from her undergraduate studies to a Ph.D. program.

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Christina

As an undergraduate. I had, um, a lot of, like, qualitative research that I was really excited about, that my professors were really excited about. I had a lot of support and, people encouraging me to go through with applying for a Ph.D. program, places they thought I would be a good fit. Um, but at the time, I was, I think, I guess this would be my junior year, I got engaged. For me, it was it seemed like a good choice. But my professors were, um, you know, who are all very feminist and progressive minded, um, they were very horrified at the idea of me getting married and had concerns, which I do think were valid concerns, that it could impact my career. Um, that I might then, you know, get busy with family or with the relationship and create a situation where I was not as able to, um, focus on the research. So at that time, when I did get married, some of my professors essentially told me that they - I mean, I don't know that they officially rescinded their letters of, letters of recommendation, but they said they would not be able to write the same letters for me that they would have been able to write prior. One professor said that they felt that I was, um, just going to get married and have kids and that it wasn't going to work. So I even in a very progressive feminist pro-feminist environment, this is the early 2000’s, um, there were there was maybe it was reality based that they just understood the realities that I would be facing and that I could, you know, be discriminated against or that I might truly not be able to balance it. But, um, I did have a few professors that still wrote strong letters for me, and I did get into programs, but I wonder if I would have gotten into even better programs or received more funding if, um, I had not been married or been truthful about the fact that I was married.

00:15:39:06 - 00:15:48:06

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Despite the disappointing lack of support from her professors, Christina was accepted into a few Ph.D. programs, only to discover that her partner was no longer on board.

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Christina

When we were in undergraduate, we went to different colleges, um, and we sort of had a long distance relationship. At that time, you know, I was planning for graduate school. He was planning to go straight to career after, um, undergraduate. And he told me that he would be supportive of me getting a Ph.D., um, you know, a five year program. Once that actually came to fruition and I was accepted and we were already married, um, at that point, it would have taken a little bit of relocation for me to do that based on the programs that I was interested in and accepted to. Um, and he was sort of just getting his feet wet in corporate America and, you know, starting to, you know, create his career. So at that time, he was not supportive, but he said, you know, when the kids are older and, you know, if we decided to have kids first, we sort of made a plan together to, um, postpone graduate school. I didn't think it would be the five year Ph.D. program. I sort of said goodbye to that, realizing that that would be hard to do, you know, in my 30s or something like that with, with children. But I, I always knew I would go back to school for something. When the kids were older, and I felt like it was the right time for me and for them, um, even then, my spouse was not supportive because he said that, um, really, and this is true, that the older kids need you more than ever, right? I mean, the middle school, high school age, it was like, we think they're very independent. They seem very independent. They don't always want to talk to you except for inopportune times. But they do need you when they need you and you need to be readily available. So he was kind of concerned. He basically said that he liked me being in the supporting role as wife and mom, and that that was a full time gig. But I felt strongly about it, and I informed him that this is what I was doing. He basically said, I'm not going to finance it, and I - which was a surprise because I said, you know, after all these years, I thought that, you know, I, I paused, so I thought that we would be able to, um, you know, pick up whenever I was ready.

00:17:47:28 - 00:17:53:15

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Christina’s partner didn't want her to go back to school, and ultimately he refused to pay for it. But that didn't stop her. She applied to graduate school anyway, and when she was accepted, they offered her a graduate assistantship that fully covered her tuition.

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Christina

Sometimes you have to make a decision for yourself. And for what you know that you need. Even if, you don't have the support.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Christina isn't alone. A lot of student parents find themselves in need of support - whether that means access to resources, childcare options, or community connections. They face unique challenges as they work to balance academic demands with family responsibilities. And universities are increasingly putting programs and initiatives in place to help them succeed.

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Kimberly McComb

If you don't have a support system and you are unable to pick up your child from school or childcare or whatever, what are you supposed to do? What options do you really have? Right? Again, they say go to school, get a degree, and then when you're here, there's nothing. And I think that's really what I would like for us to just be kind of to come together as a community a lot better. You know, we can't do this by ourselves. People are trying and they're trying earnestly. They're trying their hardest. Don't punish them. Don't make it harder than what it needs to be.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

That was Kimberly McComb. She's the project coordinator for CCAMPIS at Towson University. CCAMPIS is a federally-governed grant that gives student parents access to resources that will help them succeed.

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Kimberly McComb

There are different sort of resources that we offer, such as a, child care subsidy where we could pay a portion of child care tuition for the members of our program. We have a Chromebook loaner program, textbook loaner. We actually have a room in the library, the family study room where parenting students can actually bring their children and also study. And we have monitors of the room, so they can kind of occupy the children a little bit while the parent studies.

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Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Can you tell me what SOS is?

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Kimberly McComb

Yeah, SOS is Student Outreach and Support. They're great. If a student is in crisis, uh, hat is who they would go to. And if we have a question or we're experiencing not necessarily an issue, but a problem arises with the student. We kind of tap on their shoulder.

00:20:03:02 - 00:20:08:28

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Can you give me an example of a time that life happened to one of the students that you serve, and how you help them solve that problem?

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Kimberly McComb

Yeah, for sure. Actually, there was a car issue, one of our students lives pretty far. Like when I say out pretty far like, out of state. So them having a car issue became I can no longer go to school. Right. And, you know, attendance is a is a grade, right? Not only can they not go to school, they their child can't go to childcare. Right. As they have such a wide network. They were able to provide funds and provide resources. So the student was able to get a car and, um, able to go to, to school. And it really didn't affect her too much. Another thing, too, is that sometimes students with older kids feel as though they are not—they can't be a part of the program because it's like, hey, I don't really need childcare, but we have a textbook loaner program, meaning we will buy one textbook for you, right? You might have a computer concern. We can get you a Chromebook. But most importantly, I think something that I hear a lot is that a lot of student parents, um, they feel alone. They feel like they are the only ones on campus. They are a nontraditional student. So to me, it's more so even if we can't give you this specific resource, I think it's important to connect with a community, with other moms, with other dads, um, with other guardians, right? To know that you exist and to talk about these things too, and also introduce your children to other children who are in a very similar spot. Um, that's, that's our goal.

00:21:35:23 - 00:22:05:16

Stephanie Sundermann-Zinger

Having children changes you. But as our guests today demonstrated, it doesn't have to stop you from pursuing your goals, whatever they might be. If you're a parent listening to this and thinking, hey, maybe I could go back to school. I hope their stories offered you a little inspiration and a glimpse into what's possible. You've been listening to Three Degrees, a podcast produced out of Towson University by myself and my co-producer and sound engineer, Bryonna Seick.

00:22:05:18 - 00:22:32:27

Narrator

Founded in 1866, Towson University is a top ranked comprehensive public research university recognized as Maryland's number one public institution by the Wall Street Journal. As Greater Baltimore's largest university, TU proudly serves as an engine of opportunity for nearly 20,000 students, the state of Maryland and beyond. Explore more than 190 top ranked undergraduate and graduate degree programs and make our momentum yours at towson.edu