Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of profiles of graduates who attended the 2024 Winter Grad Walk.
Many adult learners studying at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) have complicated stories. They talk of the difficulty in taking classes while juggling family and jobs, of keeping up with coursework while navigating loss, and of studying under adverse conditions during military combat assignments. But it may be hard to top Shamika Wallace, who graduated this month with a Bachelor Science in Social Science with a minor in Gerontology and Aging Services.
Diagnosed with a rare, incurable and potentially fatal skin disease, Wallace had to manage a pregnancy and about 25 operations during her five years as a UMGC student. She said the support of her professors and success coaches, as well as the inspiration she received from her young son, pushed her through. She was among the roughly 2,500 students who were honored at UMGC’s Winter Grad Walk this month.
Wallace’s journey to a degree was an up-and-down one. She attended Morgan State University but her work schedule, the long commute and the tuition costs soon became too much. Then she was accepted into another local university but, on the day she signed up for classes, she found out she was pregnant.
During the pregnancy, Wallace began experiencing the symptoms of hidradenitis suppurativa, a chronic and painful skin condition in which hair follicles become inflamed and infected, causing cysts to form. Wallace had an extreme form of the ailement and she required repeated emergency surgeries. Along the way, she developed sepsis and went into sepsis shock three times. Some of her hospital stays lasted months.
“I was close to not making it a few times,” she said.
Because of her pregnancy and her medical condition, a brick-and-mortar university experience was not a possibility for her. Wallace’s search for a fully online university program led her to UMGC, where she said the reception was responsive and caring.
“I was just letting them know, ‘Hey, I'm in the hospital. Is there anything that I can make up? I feel like I'm missing work. I feel like I didn't do my best on this,’” she said. “Some of them [the faculty] said, ‘We'll let you have a retry. We'll let you do this paper all over if you feel like you didn't succeed in what you wanted to say.’
“I took two different finals from my hospital bed,” she added. “The professors definitely were very supportive and understanding.”
She said her success coaches were essential to her progress.
“Everything that I called in about, even from switching my major—probably about seven different times—they were right there,” she said. “They encouraged me to keep going, and they encouraged me to follow my dreams.”
Although her interactions with the success coaches were strictly remote-- over phone or online—she never actually met the coaches in person—she developed a connection with them.
“Some of the things that they were sharing with me made a big difference,” she said. “You’re building these connections with these people. It was a family-oriented feeling for me.”
But it was her now 5-year-old son, Omari, the child born during her medical ordeal, who really kept her going.
“Just because he's my baby,” she said by way of explanation. “Just looking at your child and being a single mother, you realize your child is your only person,” she said. “He really inspired me to just keep pushing, despite the pain that I’d be in every day, despite just doing everything on my own. He looks at me and [would] be like, ‘Mommy, I love you.’ Or ‘Are you OK?’ Or ‘Why do you look sad?’
“That just gave me the push to keep going for my son,” she said.
Born and raised in Waldorf, Maryland, Wallace has worked to find employment services for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities. This year, she started working as a workforce coordinator for Lifestyles of Maryland, a nonprofit focused on underserved communities dealing with homelessness, hunger and other challenges. With her new UMGC degree, Wallace aspires to become a geriatric case worker or move into geriatric social services.
And as for school, she’s not done yet. She is applying to an online master’s degree in gerontology.
Her advice to other students is the same advice she gave herself.
“If there's somebody out there feeling discouraged because of what they're going through, just keep going,” she said. “They'll make it to the finish line. If they don’t, they’ll just have that regret and feel like they didn’t succeed in life. I don’t think anyone wants that feeling.”
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