At 19 years old, Janelle Racine was struggling in college, with a 1.7 GPA and at risk of losing her financial aid, she dropped out. At the time, she couldn’t see how a college education was going to help her. Instead of continuing her pursuit of a degree in environmental science, she got a temporary job as a technician at a factory. At the factory, her lab skills and work ethic earned her a full-time job, and over the next 10 years she worked her way up to an administrative role.
It was then, in 2019, when she started back at the Mount, taking one class at a time. As a working mother to a four-year-old girl, with a husband who was working overnights, she decided she wanted more.
“I decided it was time to do something just for me, to prove I wasn’t just a mom and could be something more,” Racine says. “Plus, I was hoping that the classes I was taking would help me move up in my job, earning me better hours or money and allowing me more time with my daughter.”
This time Racine was working toward a degree in business administration and was enjoying her classes, especially Strategic Management with Professor Elmer Eubanks. Her courses opened her eyes to the fact that her employer was over-utilizing and undervaluing her work and gave her the confidence to resign and get a better job, closer to home.
“The Mount helped me repair my self-esteem and realize my true value,” Racine continued. “Taking classes, the time away from my family, and the work I put in actually helped me to free up time and be a better person for my family.”
As a non-traditional student, Racine could see the knowledge she was gaining through a different lens than she had as a twenty-year-old. She could see how she would apply the lessons she was learning in her career, not just as theory, and it made her a better employee.
Racine is graduating May 17th with her Associate Degree in Business Administration with High Honors and is the recipient of the Business Administration Career Curriculum Award.
Racine tells us, “I used to think ‘it’s just the Mount’, ‘it’s just an associate degree’. We are programmed by society to be hard on ourselves and to always want more to feel good enough. We are told to lose more weight, make more money, get a bachelor’s degree, then an MBA, on and on. When you don’t do these things, you feel like you aren’t good enough, that you’ve settled. When I was 19 and dropped out of college, I felt like I had failed.
“But I hadn’t settled. It turned out to be what I needed to do to figure out what I truly wanted, to learn how to live for myself and not society’s expectation of what I should want.
“I no longer say ‘it’s just’ to anything. Because it’s not ‘just the Mount’, it’s hard work, homework, exams, team projects and so much more. It’s not ‘just a 2-year degree’, it took me four years, one class at a time. Nights and weekends, away from family and friends, working toward a goal. And it’s not ‘just an associate degree or certificate’ it’s a symbol of my dedication and hard work and it can’t be taken away.”