I wake up to Jase’s sweet gibberish speaking through the baby monitor.

It seems that I have slept through my alarm again, which isn’t unusual after a long night of homework. Rushing out of bed, I cater to his needs, dressing him, feeding him, constantly smothering him in kisses. He deserves it.

After spending too much time with him, I’m only left with 20 minutes for myself to get ready. It’ll have to do. We rush out of the front door when Jase immediately runs to his wagon, wanting to be pushed. I struggle to hold my keys, backpack, diaper bag and lunch box. I try to rush him to the car, which irritates him — all he wants to do is play with Mama this morning. But we can’t. We both must go to school.

Being a student mother has forced me to become more aware of reasons why obtaining a degree is so important. As a mother, I’m a role-model. If there is one thing I can teach my son, it would be to never give up, even when things get hard. Many student mothers like myself are not giving up, even though life gets difficult. We have to strive to work harder than we have ever had to because now we have someone looking up to us.

College stress is bad enough for students, but adding kids to the mix does not make the process of getting a degree easier. If anything, it’s double the work, double the chaos, double the stress and half the sleep. But student mothers also share the many problems other students face.

Time management is among the many skills student mothers need to immediately grasp. For student mothers, it seems there is never enough time between homework, cooking, cleaning and booger and buttwiping. And while some tasks such as changing diapers must be taken care of immediately, others such as homework have to wait until everything else is taken care of, which usually starts around 8:30 p.m. when my toddler goes to bed.

But sometimes school work can’t wait. Senior Amoya Knudson knows this better than most as a English writing and rhetoric major and a student mother.

“Of course, being a student and a mom can be challenging at times,” Knudson said. “I have to sacrifice family time in order to keep up with my school work.”

Relationships also change while in college. Some students fade away from high school relationships they’ve held for so long. The same goes for student mothers and mothers in general. Relationships fade because there simply is no time to have one with anything or anyone other than your coursework and of course your child.

Unfortunately, people eventually get tired of hearing your reasonable excuses for not wanting to hang with them on Friday nights. (I mean who really buys the “I have to write an essay tonight” excuse on a weekend?) But as a mother I’m here to tell you that it’s not that we’re making up these excuses to avoid hanging out with friends. As much as I’d love to just throw back a few and relax, my 5-page essay needs to get written and Friday night is the only time I have off of both work and school to get it done.  

“I enjoy being a good role model for my kids. I can’t tell them to work hard if I am not willing to work hard,” Knudson said.

Although I may seem like I’m complaining, I want to first and foremost clarify that I love being a mother. I’m not writing this because I want others to feel sorry for student mothers, nor am I writing this to invalidate the many stresses college students have. I’m simply writing this because as students, we all share the same aspirations.

There may be different reasons as to why, but we are all here to achieve the same things: an education, a sense of who we are and a degree. Just as we are each striving toward the same goals, we all share common problems in college.

The fact of the matter is, college isn’t something to just ease your way through. If it were easy, everyone would do it. It’s a constant struggle, but that’s what makes it rewarding. As a student mother I struggle in different ways, but I’ve also come to conclude that my education reflects on who I am as a mother. I am no longer doing this for myself, but for Jase. He deserves an educated mother who will work her hardest to care for him for the rest of his life. He deserves everything.

Jase and I stare at each other as I lay him down in his crib. He grins. I tell him I love him. Kissing his cheek, I turn on his night-light and close his door. It’s time for him to dream of angels and time for me to complete homework.

Such is the life of a student mother.