Fay­ola Fras­er

Af­ter putting her own ed­u­ca­tion on hold to raise a fam­i­ly, Car­lette Giusep­pi-Pereira re­turned to uni­ver­si­ty in her 40s, bal­anc­ing moth­er­hood, teach­ing and stud­ies to earn a de­gree in lin­guis­tics at UWI St Au­gus­tine.

For Giusep­pi-Pereira, walk­ing across the stage as a grad­u­ate at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine’s grad­u­a­tion last week, to re­ceive her de­gree was about much more than earn­ing a qual­i­fi­ca­tion. It was a mo­ment that brought to­geth­er years of sac­ri­fice, dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions, per­son­al chal­lenges and a de­ter­mi­na­tion to prove that the pur­suit of a dream does not have an ex­piry date.

The 44-year-old moth­er of two from Bel­mont spent much of her adult life putting her own ed­u­ca­tion­al am­bi­tions aside to fo­cus on rais­ing her chil­dren and build­ing her fam­i­ly. A pri­ma­ry school teacher at Maria Regi­na Grade School, a pri­vate Catholic pri­ma­ry school, Giusep­pi-Pereira had long want­ed to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion, but the de­mands of moth­er­hood and fam­i­ly life meant that uni­ver­si­ty had to wait. This year, as grad­u­ates cel­e­brat­ed their achieve­ments at UWI St Au­gus­tine’s grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies, she was able to re­flect on a jour­ney that test­ed her re­silience while open­ing doors to a fu­ture she once thought might re­main out of reach.

Giusep­pi-Pereira had her daugh­ter when she was 20, at a stage when many young peo­ple were prepar­ing to en­ter uni­ver­si­ty or be­gin­ning their ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. Al­though she at­tempt­ed to pur­sue a Bach­e­lor of Ed­u­ca­tion in her 20s, the ex­pe­ri­ence proved dif­fi­cult as her sec­ond child, her son, was a nine-month-old ba­by at the time. “It was so rough,” she re­mem­bers, “I wasn’t able to cope and did not com­plete the pro­gramme.” The de­mands of rais­ing a young child were sim­ply too much to man­age along­side her stud­ies at the time.

Years lat­er, how­ev­er, her de­sire to learn and de­vel­op her knowl­edge and skill set had not dis­ap­peared. By 2021, in her late thir­ties, she was ready to give uni­ver­si­ty an­oth­er try, this time ap­proach­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence with the clar­i­ty, per­spec­tive and de­ter­mi­na­tion that came with age. She ap­plied to UWI St Au­gus­tine for part-time stud­ies, recog­nis­ing that she would need a pro­gramme that could ac­com­mo­date her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as a teacher and moth­er. The part-time route meant that what might or­di­nar­i­ly take three years would take five, but she was pre­pared to com­mit to the longer jour­ney.

Her in­ten­tion was to pur­sue Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture for ed­u­ca­tion, a pro­gramme she be­lieved would strength­en her qual­i­fi­ca­tions and al­low her to teach Eng­lish A at the sec­ondary school lev­el. The uni­ver­si­ty, how­ev­er, of­fered her a place in the Lin­guis­tics pro­gramme in­stead. At first, she was un­fa­mil­iar with the dis­ci­pline and un­cer­tain about what it would in­volve. Af­ter do­ing her re­search, she re­alised “it was right up my al­ley, study­ing the struc­tures and his­to­ry of lan­guages,” and that it would al­so of­fer her var­i­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing teach­ing in sec­ondary schools and po­ten­tial­ly go­ing in­to speech pathol­o­gy.

That de­ci­sion turned out to be an im­por­tant turn­ing point. Lin­guis­tics, the study of lan­guage and its struc­tures, de­vel­op­ment and use, proved far more in­ter­est­ing than she had an­tic­i­pat­ed. As she pro­gressed through the cours­es, she found her­self ex­plor­ing con­cepts she had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered and dis­cov­er­ing new ways to un­der­stand some­thing she had en­coun­tered through­out her ca­reer as a teacher.

“It felt so good to learn some­thing new,” she said.

The jour­ney was far from sim­ple or straight­for­ward. Giusep­pi-Pereira be­gan her de­gree dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, in 2021, when teach­ing and learn­ing were large­ly con­duct­ed on­line. Al­though vir­tu­al class­es brought their own chal­lenges, af­ter the pan­dem­ic re­treat­ed, tran­si­tion­ing back to in-per­son ac­tiv­i­ties added an­oth­er lay­er of com­plex­i­ty. She had to re­turn to the dai­ly rou­tine of tak­ing her chil­dren to school, go­ing to her job at school, ful­fill­ing her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as a teacher, at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty class­es and en­sur­ing her chil­dren were cared for.

At home, her daugh­ter was pro­gress­ing through sec­ondary school and her son was prepar­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment be­fore mov­ing in­to Form One. As their moth­er, she re­mained close­ly in­volved in their ed­u­ca­tion even while man­ag­ing her own as­sign­ments, dead­lines and ex­am­i­na­tions. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, she re­mem­bers learn­ing the im­por­tance of time man­age­ment skills, to stay abreast of all her roles as a moth­er, teacher, and stu­dent, while al­so en­sur­ing she had time for her­self. Go­ing through a sep­a­ra­tion dur­ing this pe­ri­od al­so added an­oth­er men­tal and emo­tion­al as­pect of what Giusep­pi-Pereira had to con­tend with.

Point­ing to her teach­ing fra­ter­ni­ty and her in­sis­tence on rais­ing self-suf­fi­cient chil­dren, she re­lied on both of these to get her de­gree done. If her chil­dren need­ed ad­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic sup­port, she drew on the as­sis­tance of teacher friends, ask­ing them to keep an eye on her son’s school­work and arranged ex­tra lessons for her daugh­ter where nec­es­sary when she could not pro­vide the sup­port her­self. House­hold re­spon­si­bil­i­ties al­so had to be shared. She taught her chil­dren to wash their own clothes and do house­hold chores so the bur­den would not sole­ly be hers. When it came to cook­ing, she did her best to pre­pare meals that could last sev­er­al days and ac­cept­ed as­sis­tance from oth­ers when it was avail­able.

Her ex­pe­ri­ence al­so chal­lenged the as­sump­tions she had car­ried about re­turn­ing to uni­ver­si­ty as an old­er stu­dent. In her 40s, she found her­self study­ing along­side class­mates who were most­ly in their ear­ly 20s. Ini­tial­ly, the age dif­fer­ence was some­thing she had to con­sid­er, but she dis­cov­ered that it was pos­si­ble to form friend­ships and mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions across gen­er­a­tions. Her own ex­pe­ri­ence as a teacher and moth­er of teenagers al­so helped her re­late to younger stu­dents and form bonds she nev­er ex­pect­ed.

By grad­u­a­tion day, the sig­nif­i­cance of what she had ac­com­plished was dif­fi­cult to put in­to words. The cer­e­mo­ny brought a mix­ture of emo­tions, in­clud­ing pride in com­plet­ing the de­gree and re­lief at hav­ing made it through the chal­lenges that had ac­com­pa­nied the process. For her, the scroll rep­re­sent­ed not sim­ply the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of five years of part-time study, but proof that the set­backs she had ex­pe­ri­enced along the way had not pre­vent­ed her from mov­ing for­ward.

One of the most mean­ing­ful mo­ments came through her daugh­ter’s pride in her. In a mo­ment that moved her to tears, her daugh­ter post­ed a pho­to­graph of her moth­er re­ceiv­ing her de­gree, with the cap­tion: “Con­grats Mum­my, I’m so proud of you. I love you so much.”

The mes­sage cap­tured some­thing Giusep­pi-Pereira had hoped to achieve through­out the jour­ney. While she want­ed to im­prove her own prospects and pur­sue a long-held am­bi­tion, she al­so want­ed her chil­dren to see what it meant to dream and per­se­vere. She hoped that watch­ing her re­turn to school, man­age her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and ul­ti­mate­ly grad­u­ate would teach them that even in the face of time and set­backs, “you can do it. You can go for your dreams.”

Her am­bi­tions have not end­ed with re­ceiv­ing her de­gree. Hav­ing dis­cov­ered an in­ter­est in speech-lan­guage pathol­o­gy, Giusep­pi-Pereira will be seek­ing to com­plete cer­tifi­cate cours­es in the field. Her aim is to meet the re­quire­ments to en­ter a mas­ter’s pro­gramme in 2028, af­ter which she hopes to prac­tise in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the Caribbean. It is a new pro­fes­sion­al di­rec­tion that grew out of an aca­d­e­m­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty she had not ini­tial­ly planned to pur­sue.

Look­ing back, she be­lieves her age was an ad­van­tage rather than an ob­sta­cle. The ex­pe­ri­ence she had gained through work, moth­er­hood and nav­i­gat­ing life’s dif­fi­cul­ties helped her be­come more fo­cused and dis­ci­plined. “Be­ing old­er,” she says, “I had more ex­pe­ri­ence to han­dle dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions.” Her ad­vice to oth­ers con­sid­er­ing a re­turn to ed­u­ca­tion is sim­ple: do not al­low age to be­come a rea­son to aban­don an am­bi­tion. She be­lieves peo­ple can con­tin­ue learn­ing and de­vel­op­ing their abil­i­ties well in­to adult­hood, and that the sat­is­fac­tion of com­plet­ing a goal can make the sac­ri­fices worth­while.

But, as Giusep­pi-Pereira’s ex­pe­ri­ence demon­strates, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn and the de­ter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed can re­main long af­ter the first chance has passed. For any­one won­der­ing whether it is too late to re­turn to school, change di­rec­tion or pur­sue a long-held goal, her mes­sage is clear: it is nev­er too late to learn, and the ful­fil­ment that comes from see­ing a dream through can be worth every chal­lenge along the way.