The path to the stage

Grambling State University saw hundreds of students from its spring and fall 2020 graduating classes walk the stage this month to accept their diplomas. But not every graduate took the same path to scholarly success.

Tyra Muhammad withdrew from GSU in the ‘90s to look after her growing family before coming back to school to walk the stage with her son decades later.

Kayla Allen severely injured her arms in a vehicle crash two years ago and had to teach herself how to write again in order to finish her degree.

And Kimorah John came to Grambling from the island country of Dominica on a scholarship from her nation’s government, hoping to use her degree to dissolve the misconceptions about mental illness in her community.

The Leader spoke with these three graduates to hear their stories of challenges they overcame to obtain their degrees.

Tyra Muhammad

Muhammad originally enrolled at GSU in 1993. She married a man she had met there in 1994 at the age of 19 and started a family soon after.

“I got pregnant while I was still in school, and it was a bit much for me, so I ended up having to withdraw,” she said.

That wouldn’t be the last time she would choose to prioritize caring for her children over other life pursuits. She became a Certified Nursing Assistant in 1996 and worked in the medical field for a short time before having her second daughter. She halted that career so that she wouldn’t have to work nights while tending to another baby.

Muhammad would try to re-enroll at GSU in 1998, but she again chose to give it up for the time being in order to raise her young kids.

“In the back of my mind I knew I still wanted to complete my degree, but I kept putting in on the backburner because I wanted to make sure that my children and my husband were taken care of,” she said.

She knew she wanted that degree to be from Grambling State, because that’s where her parents met and where generations of family members on her mother’s side had gone to school and worked.

While living in Chicago in 2012, she looked into enrolling at GSU through distance learning, but that option wasn’t available at the time.

Finally, in the fall of 2018, the now-divorced mother of five moved back to Louisiana and re-enrolled at GSU.

“I already had children here in Louisiana attending Grambling, and I’m from Louisiana anyway,” Muhammad said. “So I moved the rest of us here and reenrolled with one of my other sons. So at that time there were four Muhammads on the Grambling State campus.”

She said attending college with three of her children was a blessing she could never have expected.

“I sat them down and had a conversation, to get their feedback on me re-enrolling,” she said. “Did it seem awkward or uncomfortable to them? And they said no, they were actually excited.

“Many people know the Muhammad family on campus. It’s a good feeling, just to be able to do things like that with my children and share those moments with them. I’m thankful for that experience.”

Finally, 27 years after she started, Muhammad received her bachelor’s degree in English with her kids and mother in the stands, just two days after her son Elijah also graduated.

“It was such an amazing, awesome experience,” she said. “I’m already proud because he’s graduating, but then to do it together was even more exciting. I’m still on cloud nine right now. It was wonderful, and to have my children and my mother there was icing on the cake. To have her there to experience it after all these years — I loved it.”

Muhammad plans to pursue teaching and enroll at GSU once again in the spring of 2021 to obtain her master’s degree.

Kayla Allen

At 21, Allen was the youngest member of GSU’s fall 2020 graduating class. She accomplished this feat despite suffering severe injuries in a car accident just two years ago.

“In my right arm, I have two rods,” she said. “I had nine surgeries on my right arm. I have a plate in my left arm and had three surgeries on that.”

She also broke her right wrist, which restricted her from being able to fully turn her right arm over.

“I had to learn how to write again,” Allen said. “I taught myself how. It was difficult, but I got through it. I started writing my numbers and my ABC’s everyday. I never went to rehab. Most of the things I just tried to do on my own. I didn’t want to feel like I was slow or couldn’t do it.”

Now Allen says her writing is almost back to normal. Her only issue now is that when the weather gets cold, her right arm cramps up, but “looking back then versus now, it’s great.”

“I never anticipated graduating,” she said. “I thought it was over for me. So it feels amazing — I still can’t believe that I graduated. Now I’m ready for what’s next.”

Beyond publishing a book on her experiences, Allen’s goal is to become a clinical psychologist so that she can pass along some of the things she has learned on her journey.

“In overcoming some of the obstacles I overcame, I feel like I can help other people,” she said. “I feel like I can be a motivation for others, to let them know that, ‘Yeah, you can still do it.’ I want to be able to help people.”

She said when she was younger her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

“I never knew what was going on when I was younger,” she said. "Once I found out, that just made me want to do this even more.”

Allen said she wants to inspire people that no setback or challenge cannot be beaten.

“Defeat is only temporary,” she said.

Kimorah John

The Commonwealth of Dominica is an island country in the Caribbean. Each year, the nation’s government chooses a few students and grants them scholarships to study abroad.

John was chosen, and she said it was at the advice of the country’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skeritt that she chose to attend Grambling State.

Majoring in psychology with a minor in sociology, John would go on to become GSU’s fall 2020 valedictorian. She said she grew up in a community where mental health is often overlooked, and she wants to help change that.

“Oftentimes, individuals with mental illnesses are labeled ‘crazy’ and are rarely referred to mental health professionals or institutions,” John said. “As a result, these individuals are left untreated. I dislike the label ‘crazy’ attached to mentally ill individuals because this term only fuels the stigma associated with mental health. Therefore, I hope to help eradicate the stigma associated with mental health in my community.”

She said her childhood experiences motivated her to gain more knowledge about mental health disorders in order to raise awareness in her community. However, while at GSU she said her interests moved toward cognitive psychology, another area in which she hopes to make a difference.

“I am familiar with the saying that no dream is too big to achieve,” John said. “I have big dreams, and one of my dreams is to find a cure for cognitive related diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. With the rate of technological advancement, anything is possible. I hope to be a part of the team that finally finds a cure for these diseases.”