The day I walked across the graduation stage at the College of William & Mary, I felt like so many of my peers: both proud and incredibly exhausted. But my exhaustion wasn't from the standard late nights in the library, nor was it the result of too many cold ones after a raucous graduation party. It came from the unique condition that most of my college peers wouldn't experience until later in life: parenthood.
I started my freshman year as a teen mom with a daughter who was just three months old. Despite periods of homelessness, some cold winters without heat, and having to make tough decisions between textbooks and diapers, I ultimately finished in four years, with high honors, at age 23.
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