Ready For a Career and a Family: Yalissa Mondragon | Eastern North Carolina Now

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    WASHINGTON, NC     Ideally, valued positions provide enough income to sustain workers and their families. Unfortunately, some jobs can only sustain employees in the short term. Beaufort County Community College student Yalissa Mondragon found that working at a pre-school and trying to raise a family was one of those situations. She has taken her passion for children and directed it into a new profession: neonatal nursing.

    "It's not enough to support a family of five," said Mondragon of her income at the time. "I wanted to do more with my life." Mondragon is a mother of three and her husband Isael is a mechanic specializing in foreign diesel cars. The quest to find a sustainable income sent her back to college.

    Mondragon, like so many other students at BCCC, had a long road ahead of her before attending community college that would inspire her career choice. She had her first child, Andrew, at 16, following in the footsteps of her mother, who had her at 15. Mondragon had a tumultuous childhood, bouncing around from state to state. The family moved from Fayetteville, NC, to Mississippi and then Louisiana. Finally they returned to North Carolina, where she attended high school in Bear Grass.


    After high school, she attended community college, but she was unsuccessful. "I was not ready to be an adult," she said.

    Coming from Bear Grass, where her graduating class had 30 students, taking classes at Pitt Community College, where class sizes can swell to as many as 70 students, was too overwhelming. The instructors did not have time to provide her with extra help.

    She left college and started working at the pre-school. Her haphazard childhood steeled her commitment to children.

    "I want them to know that somebody's going to be there. Somebody's going to show them love," she said as her eyes welled up with tears. She wanted to find another field where she could make even more of a difference in the lives of children.

    "I want my kids, and these kids I will take care of, to have a better experience than I did. I want them to receive great health care. I want to be there for them," she said.

    When she got hired at the pre-school, she hoped she would be able to make a career of it, but it became clear to her that this was an unlikely prospect. Her co-workers were also working to further their education, working on degrees such as medical office administration.

    "Pre-school was something to get by with. It was not going to support my family." She was living paycheck to paycheck.

    She chose BCCC as the place to complete her education due to the smaller class sizes and personal attention students receive. She has completed two associate's degrees and will graduate from the nursing program in May 2018. She thought, "I'm making all A's. I could do nursing."

    She has experienced preventative care on the part of the instructors at BCCC. The instructors anticipate that students will need extra help. They set up enrichment labs and group study sessions to help them adjust to the rigorous study that the nursing program demands.

    "I've had instructors meet me on the weekend," she said. "I've never been turned down for help." She has yet to meet an instructor who has not helped her solve a problem within the same week.

    "They are not waiting until we are failing," Mondragon said of her instructors. "They are well prepared, knowing that we're going to need help." Even in the many hours of online classes that are part of her curriculum, the instructors will share advice that will help on tests or links to helpful videos.

    Her life is much more settled now. She and her husband got married last year, seven years into their relationship. There was no big ceremony, just a trip down to the courthouse. Her kids were annoyed that they got married without telling them. Just like her experience with college, she wanted to make sure she was ready to be successful. She got married the first time just a year out of high school due to social pressure. They did not know each other. They did not live together. This time around she and Isael intentionally waited, despite pressure for them to get married.

    "We wanted to make sure it's what we wanted," she said. They each brought a child to the relationship and had a daughter, Valeria, together.

    They placed a home on land adjacent to her parents' house. Her mother now sends her supportive texts. With her step-father's experience in construction, they are making renovations.

    After finishing at BCCC, she plans to get a bachelor's degree from East Carolina University, but online classes will help her avoid the anxiety of large class sizes. She plans to work in labor and delivery at the Vidant Beaufort Hospital.

    "The patients smile because they know you're going to make their day better," she said of her clinical experience.

    Mondragon smiles now because, through BCCC, she has found a way to support her family and make the lives of other families so much better.

  • Contact: Attila Nemecz
  •     Attila.Nemecz@beaufortccc.edu

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