A 28-year-old single mother of three graduated from UCLA last week with two bachelor’s and a master’s degree to her name. Deanne Jordan, got pregnant as a teenager, and had her third son before the age of 25, but it was important for her to set a good example for her children.
Reports CBS Los Angeles:
“I needed for my sons to see there was a legacy that preceded them with college. I am the first in my family to go to college,” Jordan said.
Jordan grew up in Compton. After high school, she got pregnant at 18. She had her third son at 22.
“I had him and in the hospital I remember thinking, ‘I’m 22, there’s no future unless I can create one,’” Jordan said.
After two years at West Los Angeles Community College and three-and-a-half years at UCLA, the department scholar is graduating with two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s in African-American Studies.
“She had limited time, plus she took the initiative,” Dale Tatum, a UCLA lecturer, said.
Jordan also founded the Compton Pipeline Taskforce—she and UCLA volunteers work on academics at Compton schools, including Carver Elementary, where she attended.
“I saw the difference in how my boys were in school in Brentwood and then how schools were in Compton where I came from,” she said.
Jordan credits family support and UCLA for making her dreams a reality.
The new graduate will head to law school next (she’s taking a year off first). Her plan is to become a district attorney.
She has some words of wisdom on reaching your dreams: “You can’t really succeed unless you fail, and I failed a lot of times, but it was my persistence and my willingness never to give up.”
Well said.
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Photo: CBS screenshot
