Nobody is defined by their current circumstances. Read how the reseilience of a medical assisting student helped her overcome a setback to pursue a degree.
By Diondria Wilkinson, medical assisting student, Southeast Community College (SCC), Lincoln, NE
While many times in my life I have needed to be resilient, I especially need it as a single mom of three little children trying to pursue a career. It has not been easy.
About a year and a half ago I started the medical assisting program but due to medical reasons affecting one of my children, I failed out. As a result, I was faced with a decision: either give up on my career and just work odd jobs to make ends meet or to eventually go back to school and continue studying toward my medical assisting degree as I had hoped and planned for. During this time, I was discouraged, and I am not ashamed to say that. With everything going wrong at that time, I was tempted to give up but now am so glad that I didn’t.
Before I reentered the medical assisting program at SCC in August of 2020, I found employment and did everything in my power to get things aligned with my children to prevent history from repeating itself. My goal was to be prepared to come back stronger than before.
I kept in touch with the program chair of the medical assisting program to ensure I was able to come back and understand what it would look like for me when I did. Thankfully, my teachers were really supportive.
As hard as it was for me to come back after what I felt was a huge failure on my behalf as a student and a mother, I did and I couldn’t be happier. I feel like this is where I am meant to be and that everything that happened to me happened for a reason. That is because I am now able to do my studies knowing that I did what many may not have done and continued pursuing my career instead of giving up. None of which was easy. I am telling my story because I want to show that life does happen, and while in the moment of a tragedy or something going wrong in your life, you may feel like you aren’t able to come back from it. However, what I believe matters is what you do with that bump in the road after it happens. You are either going to stop or try and overcome it. I hope that by sharing this people understand that in life things don’t always go as we plan and not let one situation define the rest of your life—because it definitely did not define me.