TAMPA, FLA. (WSVN) - A single mother who said she nearly gave up while in college is now celebrating her upcoming graduation.
Montoya Major, a 23-year-old Alabama-native is just days away from graduating with not one, but two degrees from Nova Southeastern University.
However, Major said she didn’t always think she would make it to graduation.
Major said she discovered she was pregnant with twin girls just five months into her program.
“When I told my program director I was expecting, he told me I should just take time off and come back next year because it was going to be too hard to finish the program with a baby and “nearly impossible” to do it with two,” she wrote.
Major said she went to class everyday up until she gave birth to her daughters, Makenna and Makinlee. Just a week after delivering the girls via c-section, she was back in the classroom.
Although she was determined, Major said it wasn’t easy.
“Being a mother is hard enough, but being a single mother to two kids while being a full-time student and living away from family and friends, literally having no physical support is a different type of hard,” she said.
Major said she considered dropping out, but ultimately, she pulled through, something, she told Fox News, that she wouldn’t have been able to do without support from her friends and family, especially her father in Alabama.
“Throughout this entire journey, my father encouraged me the most although he was not physically there. My father and I are very close and have always been inseparable after my mother passed when I was young,” Major told Fox News. “Whenever I had an episode of wanting to quit school, he always encouraged me that it would be worth it in the end.”
Major will graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in cardiovascular sonography and a Master’s degree in Health Science on Aug. 16. After graduation, she plans to move back home to Alabama to be closer to family and start searching for work.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.