The Story of a Top Student and a Mother

Determining top priority while having too many responsibilities can get overwhelming. Especially, age factors and being a mother can make it harder to believe in the opportunities that are deserved. In this story, you will learn about a student called Gladys who inspires everybody around her despite her age. Her story serves as a powerful reminder to pursue what truly matters to one self.

Gladys Louis, born in 1987, is a third-stage Business Management student at the Catholic university in Erbil (CUE). She is married and a mother of two kids. She holds Bachelor’s degree in English Language from Salaheddin university in 2009. 

Gladys is a mother and a student full of experience. She worked as a volunteer in different organizations and even worked as an English language teacher in elementary school. However, she left her job in 2021. Gladys is someone who loves studying and likes working hard, hence she pursued another major in 2021 which is business management department. With her previous education and work experience, Gladys chose to pursue a second bachelor’s degree to develop her knowledge and skills in a new field. Her decision shows her interest in learning and her willingness to work hard toward new goals while balancing her responsibilities as a mother and a student.

Balancing her studies with the responsibilities of being a mother is a full-time commitment that she embraces wholeheartedly. Despite the challenges, she considers motherhood to be a true blessing. She mentioned: “Parenting is difficult in nowadays world especially when you deal with teenagers”. However, she mentioned that her kids are very supportive and do simple house chores once they see her studying. Additionally, they take inspiration from their mother and do their homework without being told. Therefore, being a mother and a student at the same time doesn’t have negative effects on her kids, but only positive. Being a mother and a student at the same time can be tough, and Gladys mentioned it throughout the interview. Moreover, it doesn’t mean you can’t follow your dreams.

Gladys inspires everybody around her, starting from her kids to her classmates at university. Not only that, she also learns many things from her classmates even though they are younger than her. Gladys ranks the top throughout the stages in the Business Management department. She always studies systematically in order to save time; studying effectively not hardly. She mentioned that the responsibilities and experience she had and she has now made her automatically study effectively. 

Gladys’s message for women who aspire to study:

“Your decisions are based on what’s suitable for you”.

At the end she mentioned that she is against not having an academic achievement. People say having a degree won’t be useful for finding a job. Gladys said, having an academic achievement is not only related to finding a job, it’s also about shaping our personality through our surroundings in any educational institutions. Hence it helps us to gain valuable life experiences.