Sheryl Stevens doesn’t eat breakfast until 4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She has to get ready for class, make sure her children get on the bus, drive to Bloomington and go to four classes before she has time.
Stevens, 30, has three sons, ages 6, 7 and 8. She earned her general equivalency degree when she was 16 in an effort to get away from the clique mentality in her peer group, she said. Stevens worked odd jobs for several years before deciding to get a degree.
“Around the time that I was really starting to get serious and considering to come back to education and make my résumé stronger, I got pregnant,” Stevens said. “I put everything on hold until my childbearing was done.”
Stevens attended Vincennes University-Jasper for a couple of years but stopped because of an issue with her financial aid. She decided to come to IU based on her brother’s recommendation, she said.
“This is my first semester back after a year of sitting back, and it’s nerve-racking,” Stevens said.
Stevens plans on pursuing a major in English and minors in ethics and philosophy and would eventually like to attend law school, she said.
“I would love to practice family law, which is different than what I thought when I first started having this idea of pursuing law school,” Stevens said. “The children are so often disregarded in divorce cases, and I know I could be an active advocate for them.”
Stevens only has classes two days a week and drives about an hour and a half from Shoals, Indiana, to get to Bloomington, she said. She has five classes, beginning at 9:15 a.m. and ending at 8:45 p.m. On days she’s not on campus, she has endless housework to do, she said.
“My husband is a very traditional sort of man,” Stevens said. “He likes to come in and put his boots by the door, so to speak, and that’s the end of his responsibilities. I’m expected to do pretty much everything aside from earning a wage.”
Stevens said her family has been on public assistance but lost it when she took out student loans, even though the loans went toward tuition and a meal plan.
“There may well come a part during this semester that, after our finite resources from the student loans have expired, that we will be able to be back on some sort of assistance, but then we have to worry about gas,” Stevens said. “There might come a time where we aren’t able to get me here without begging from family members.”
Stevens’s biggest challenges beyond balancing schoolwork and home life are inevitable but unpredictable situations, Stevens said.
“Kids are going to get sick,” Stevens said. “You’re going to get sick. There are going to be days that you don’t feel like doing anything, but you have to. So you over-indulge in coffee. You pull all-nighters that you didn’t think you could handle once you leave your teen years behind. You basically become super-powered by sheer force of will.”
Stevens waited to go back to school until her children were old enough to go to school to avoid paying for child care, she said.
She said she has not been able to find any resources for student-parents at IU, although she has not looked as strenuously as she could have because she knows her husband can take care of their children on the days she is on campus.
Tim Dunnuck, director of Early Childhood Education Services at IU, said students who are also parents often struggle with finding and affording good child care. They might also find balancing schoolwork with a job and being a parent a challenge.
“I don’t think people realize how difficult it is,” Dunnuck said. “In some families, it’s easier depending on the support system, like in a two-parent family.”
IU has five university-sponsored child care centers. Three are professionally staffed, state-licensed and nationally accredited, and the other two are state-licensed parent cooperatives, which require parents to provide care for the children.
The Student Advocates Office can also give information to pregnant or parenting students about their rights, and Adult Student Resources can direct students to financial and academic resources, according to the Division of Student Affairs.
“IU-Bloomington is pretty much looked at as a traditional campus, but there are a lot more student-families on campus than a lot of people realize,” Dunnuck said. “There’s a lot more undergraduates who have children on campus than a lot of people realize.”
Stevens said it’s rewarding to set an example for her children about the importance of education.
“They still have this idea that homework isn’t necessary, so we’re trying to instill that in them,” Stevens said. “Homework is absolutely crucial. You can’t skip anything. You have to go above and beyond.”
Although Stevens believes getting an education is crucial to her success, her family members tell her that she waited too long to come back to school and that at 30 years old, it’s too late, she said.
“I feel a huge amount of urgency to get this done,” Stevens said. “I want to be competitive with my agemates, and I’m not.”
