A 26-year-old woman named Zeinab Abdella graduated from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota in the United States 21 hours after she gave birth. Her achievement also made her the first in her family to earn a master’s degree.
Zeinab, from Syria who moved to the United States obtained a master’s degree in Special Education at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota in the United States. She showed up at her graduation ceremony 21 hours after she put into bed.
She gave birth to her daughter at 8pm but she was determined to walk the stage of her graduation the next day by 5pm. Zeinab was released from the Hospital in Minneapolis just in time to attend the ceremony with her newborn.
“I discovered I was expecting my second baby in September 2017 and doctors told me my due date was on May 16. We are told our graduation date a year before it happens so I knew I would be graduating on May 19,” she said.
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“I had Salma around 8 PM and the next morning I discussed graduation with my family and my doctors and everyone was shocked. However, they were really supportive. It was really important for me to attend because I was the first person in my family to graduate. That’s the main reason I wanted to go,” she said.
Zeinab said attending her graduation was a very important moment for her as she is the first in her family to earn a master’s degree.
“I wanted to reward myself. It took so much hard work to get to this point. There were so many late nights studying, trying to get assignments in on time. Driving too and from college on those long winter nights. I needed to do this for myself,” she said.
She said she spent two years working towards her degree at the University of St Thomas which was challenging because she was pregnant. Zeinab added that because she runs a daycare business, she had to study at night to achieve her goal.
”Of course, being pregnant made university even more challenging. I was quite sick with morning sickness at the beginning, which as you know, is very unpredictable,” she said. She said morning sickness early on in her pregnancy affected her she was determined not to let it affect her academic performance.
“Obviously attendance is extremely important and there’s a lot of assignments and group work. It was really challenging to get to the end. I was so tired a lot of the time and I was working full-time as well. I run my own daycare and I was studying by night,” she said.
Zeinab said she would never have been able to get through her degree without the support of her husband Abdul Kadir who helped to care for their four-year-old daughter. She said her husband would drive to pick her up on cold winter nights and support her through stressful assignments.
 “My husband Abdul has been the best support to me, taking care of our daughter, picking me up from college, and helping me keep calm when I was stressed,” she said.
Zeinab said she hopes to take a break from her studies for a while and later return to the university to fulfill her dream of bagging a PhD. “For the next few months, I’m hoping to enjoy my time with my new baby and hopefully return to university in the fall to work towards my Ph.D. That’s my dream,” she said.
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