{"id":115905,"date":"2020-12-03T08:30:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T13:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905///news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905//www.ucf.edu/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905//news/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905//?p=115905"},"modified":"2020-12-02T14:58:26","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T19:58:26","slug":"lessons-in-motherhood-and-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905///news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905//www.ucf.edu/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905//news/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905//lessons-in-motherhood-and-teaching/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905//","title":{"rendered":"Lessons in Motherhood and Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sometime after Lindsey Palm graduates this month /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2014 soon after UCF/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019s virtual commencement ceremony and her celebration with her COVID bubble /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2014 she plans to find a moment of quiet in her home to sit at her laptop and start an email./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n
Even though it will sit in an inbox unread for the next 16 years and 8 months, she/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019ll write all about the wonderful, miraculous chaos that has marked the last year-and-a-half of her college experience, and how it made her even more determined to obtain her bachelor/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019s in elementary education./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n On her son Brayden/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019s 18th birthday, she/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019ll hand over the password to the account she created for him where he will discover moments from his childhood captured in photos, videos and emails, including this momentous milestone they shared together./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201cIn the beginning, I had a mindset of I needed this degree to get the job that I wanted, and then when I found out I was pregnant, there was going to be nothing that stopped me from getting my degree,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201d she says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201cIt [the pregnancy] threw a curve ball in my life, but I think it motivated me more./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n Palm wanted to be a teacher for as long as she can remember. As a teenager growing up in St. Cloud, she babysat, nannied and tutored children, and set her sights on getting the college degree her parents never did./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n She enrolled in the DirectConnect to UCF program at Valencia College and arrived at UCF in 2018. By that December, she found out she was pregnant. She made it through the spring and summer A sessions before her son was born in August 2019. She took off the fall semester and enrolled in a full schedule of courses for Spring 2020./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n She says childcare and time management were a constant struggle, but her husband and extended family were as committed to Palm earning her degree as she was and helped watch Brayden when she needed to get schoolwork done. In a way, becoming a mother helped prepare her for her future profession and her last semester as an intern at UCF/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019s PedsAcademy at Nemours Children/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019s Hospital./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201cEverything I thought I knew about kids went out the window when I became a parent,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201d she says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201cI think the biggest thing I learned was how everything is so unexpected. I think with working in a hospital, it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019s the same thing. You don/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u2019t know what to expect and you just have to be able to adapt and transition into the next thing without looking back. I think having him helped me a lot with that./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/nParenthood to PedsAcademy/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/115905/n