Rodriguez tapped on the automotive window to ask what was up. The girl, a detailed buddy and co-worker, defined that she was catching some z’s between work and her night time class at neighborhood school whereas her husband, with whom she shared a automotive, was understanding.

“Why don’t you’re taking a school class with me subsequent semester?” the buddy requested.

“OK,” Rodriguez replied. “I’ll see how I do. Why not?”

The odyssey will attain its surprising vacation spot Saturday, eight years and research at no fewer than 5 faculties on three continents later. Rodriguez, now a 31-year-old mom of three and Air Power veteran, will stroll onto a Mid-America Heart stage, ship the scholar speech at Bellevue College’s spring 2022 graduation of 640 college students and declare her grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration.

She and her husband, Steve, a U.S. Military veteran, will make a journey for enjoyable to have fun — they’ll drive their children to Florida.

Alongside the best way of her academic odyssey, like many nontraditional school college students, Rodriguez discovered willpower and abilities she didn’t know she had. She developed a knack for making larger schooling methods work for her, and for locating the help she wanted to navigate by them. Rodriguez is already placing these abilities to work for different individuals as a mission coordinator in Bellevue College’s Psychological Well being Scientific Counseling program.

“My story is de facto about how the help of different individuals can create these alternatives that folks wouldn’t usually take, these dangers (to strive issues) that they don’t suppose they’re competent sufficient to do,” Rodriguez mentioned. “And the way giving individuals the help that they want, or the steerage, or taking the additional time may also help them select a path that they wouldn’t have chosen earlier than.”

Training wasn’t precisely Rodriguez’s ardour whereas rising up in Decatur, Nebraska.

“I used to be not distinctive in highschool,” she mentioned. “I procrastinated and did the work I wanted to do to tug my grades as much as a D.”

She obtained her highschool diploma by impartial research by the College of Nebraska. She enrolled at Metropolitan Group School in Omaha, however she give up throughout her freshman yr after she bought her first invoice from the faculty. Working within the service trade, driving 45 minutes to high school every method, she simply couldn’t afford college.

Rodriguez didn’t have a transparent thought of what she wished to do.

“I had quite a lot of pals with navy affiliations,” she mentioned. “So I simply went to a recruiter. I mentioned: What are you able to do for me? And I used to be gone in two weeks.”

Her first Air Power obligation task was at Fairchild Air Power Base exterior Spokane, Washington. Rodriguez labored in a pediatrics division with “wonderful” docs who had been decided to not simply deal with signs, however to search out solutions to assist individuals with no matter they had been combating.

“A variety of our job description was, how can we assist these younger mothers who’ve youngsters and don’t have their household, and possibly have a partner whose priorities lie with their obligation?” Rodriguez mentioned. “So now they’re juggling a world that they by no means knew they might be in and the place’s their sources?”

Rodriguez helped the mother and father discover and join with sources, expertise that has helped her by her school odyssey and to assist individuals in her work.

She didn’t know what discipline she wished to enter when she took that first-class at Spokane Falls Group School’s schooling heart at Fairchild AFB. She doesn’t keep in mind what that class was. However she does keep in mind the buddy who made her suppose she ought to strive it, and the expertise serving to her imagine she might do it. The category went nicely. She went on to take extra.

“I don’t even know if she actually seen she was giving me the help,” Rodriguez mentioned. “She actually was simply being type. … I imply, she is a loudmouth, Jamaican woman from the South. And right here I’m slightly Midwest woman whose first aircraft journey was to fundamental coaching. I don’t know if I might have gotten out of my shell.”

After 1½ years in Washington, Rodriguez, by then a mom, was despatched to an Air Power base in Japan. She wished to work towards a level in well being care, however couldn’t discover these lessons on bases abroad. She’s the sort of one that wants lessons in particular person, so none of her research have been on-line till her graduate lessons through the pandemic. She determined to give attention to enterprise administration.

Whereas on energetic obligation in Japan, Rodriguez knocked out a few of her lower-level lessons although the School Stage Examination Program. After a yr in Japan, she bought out of the navy — and her husband went into it.

He joined a U.S. Military Airborne division. She moved again to Nebraska to have her second little one the place household might assist whereas her husband went to eight months of coaching. They had been in a sort of limbo, not understanding the place they might be despatched, and when she would cease residing between households and will get again on monitor with college.

They bought orders to go to Italy.

“That was an enormous frustration, but it surely turned out to be a blessing in disguise,” Rodriguez mentioned.

She enrolled within the College of Maryland International Campus Europe. She took night time lessons on base with troopers. The lessons had been 4 hours lengthy, and met a couple of times per week. Her husband was away on obligation for his demanding job for all however about six months of their 2½ years in Italy. That meant that alongside along with her notebooks, she’d usually take a child to class as a result of she was nonetheless nursing.

She saved plugging away towards her diploma by extra strikes. Her husband bought posted to North Carolina. She took lessons in Christianity at Campbell College that would apply to her diploma and supplied perception that common enterprise lessons didn’t have. Her husband left the Military however went to Kuwait as a contractor. That occasioned a transfer again to Nebraska with now three youngsters, a yr left on her diploma — and one other hurdle.

“As a result of I had achieved all of most of my schoolwork at navy lessons, they had been eight-week lessons, and quite a lot of the universities that I known as round right here at first weren’t going to just accept a few yr of these lessons, the Christianity lessons, or simply the completely different lessons that I had,” Rodriguez mentioned.

She additionally wished to attend in particular person, partly as a result of her post-military advantages paid extra for in-person lessons than for on-line. She discovered Nebraska Wesleyan College’s Omaha campus. It might take all her credit. Her dad might drive down from Decatur to assist with little one care and she or he powered by till she had two lessons left.

One was an ethics course. Wesleyan solely supplied the undergraduate model in Lincoln however had the graduate-level class in Omaha. Rodriguez persuaded them to let her take the graduate class. She was intimidated at first, and her youngsters got here to view the pc as their enemy due to all of the studying and writing she needed to do, however she aced it.

That left an internship. On the peak of the pandemic. When her youngsters had been caught at residence due to COVID.

She mentioned her advisers at Wesleyan couldn’t assist her discover a firm to do her internship. Rodriguez known as a number of corporations and bought denied. She began on the lookout for veterans’ sources, searching for the unity and mutual help she had expertise in. She discovered Bellevue College’s Navy Veteran Providers Heart. They crafted an internship for her — updating their neighborhood useful resource info for veterans.

“She did it in document time,” mentioned Heather Carroll, supervisor of the Navy Veteran Providers Heart. “Then we had been in a position to signal her off, and she or he was in a position to graduate. And due to the companies which might be supplied right here on this facility, and the way it takes care of the veterans within the course of, she determined that she wished to turn out to be a grasp’s diploma scholar right here on the college as nicely.”

Rodriguez lastly bought her bachelor’s diploma in 2020. Now, she has earned a grasp’s as nicely. And her children — Tobias, 9, Vivian, 7, and Abraham, 5 — have earned a visit to Disney World and the seashore. What’s a 20-hour automotive journey once you’ve been on an eight-year academic odyssey like Rodriguez has?