Students juggle children and school
Yvette Lessard
Issue date: 4/16/09 Section: News
When her pregnancy test confirmed a positive, Malika Clarke said everything was in slow motion. She was 20, working on her degree, and six weeks pregnant.
She had always told herself she would never have children.
Clarke wondered how her life would change and if she would be able to finish school. She wondered if abortion was an option.
Clarke is part of a quiet minority of students at Cosumnes River College dealing with the unexpectedtoll of unplanned pregnancies while pursuing an education.
Community college students are more than twice as likely as students of 4-year-colleges to report they've either gotten themselves or someone else pregnant, at a rate of 48 percent, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sixty-one percent of these students end their education early, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Veronica Weire, a 23-year-old nursing major, knows what it's like to be pregnant in college.
"It was hard to come to school," she said. "Sometimes when I woke up in the morning, my heart hurt and I didn't want to get up."
Weire is married and employed as a military guard, but others like 21-year-old Kaplan College nursing major Shelby Floriz, who is planning to attend CRC, had the opposite experience.
When she found out she was pregnant, Floriz was a self-proclaimed party girl and wasn't going to college.
"I had the feeling that I shouldn't be drinking," Floriz said. "When my boyfriend went to buy some drinks, I bought a pregnancy test."
Floriz said her pregnancy convinced her to go back to school and be a more responsible person.
She and other women dealing with unexpected pregnancies as students said life as a mother and a student, and often a worker is difficult and stressful.
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