🌀 A free year... but full of thoughts
I spent practically a year lost in thought.
I had so much free time that I decided I wanted to have a child... and so it happened! 😅
That was my "free year": a happy pregnancy, full of hope, although deep down I still carried the weight of not having found my academic place.
💍 I got married (amidst the chaos)
Yes, I got married while still studying at ITLA.
I traveled every day from Los Alcarrizos to Boca Chica, with a routine that was crazy.
After we got married, we moved to Churchill. Blessed be the bus that dropped me closer to home!
And my husband, so sweet, always waited for me so I wouldn't get off the bus alone.
That gesture really stuck with me. It was protection, it was love.
Although emotionally, I felt crushed by academics.
📚 Education? Seriously?
During my pregnancy, I started researching scholarships (I was already almost an expert at it).
One day, my dream spoke to me about education scholarships.
I, who always looked into Engineering, had never seen them before.
Then I said:
“Well... if I study Education, it will be in Mathematics.”
Everyone's reaction when I said it! 😂
After having left ITLA because of numbers, now I wanted to study mathematics.
But deep down, I love it .
It's just that… I had an issue with applications (you'll understand why later).
🎓 The big leap to PUCMM
I saw a scholarship promotion at PUCMM, and without thinking twice, I applied.
I was eight months pregnant and the program started in three months.
My mom asked me:
“Are you sure? You're going to have a baby…”
And I said:
“Yes, I'm going to try.”
Gehrig was born, and at two months old, I took the entrance exam.
There were four tests: psychological, logic, POMA, and an English exam.
Thank God, I passed .
Out of 400 applicants, only 15 of us got in.
And thanks to my English level, I started directly at level 4.
👶 The journey of studying with a baby
That's when the real challenge began.
I had a months-old baby, my mother worked full-time, and I…
I was a dependent with big dreams.
Then my mother-in-law, a saint , appeared and told me:
“If you want to study, I'll take care of him.”
I would leave at 7 am, sometimes returning at night, with my breasts full of milk.
I rushed around the university like crazy, amidst "high-school" students,
but I… had a goal: to graduate.
💔 My husband went to Spain… and I was left with everything
In my second year, my husband got a scholarship to do a master's degree in Spain.
And then came the big dilemma…
“Do I tell him not to go and keep the help, or do I let him go and figure it out?”
I let him go.
And that was the hardest year of my life.
We had our own house, but everything else… cost money.
I decided to pause university for a trimester.
Supposedly, he would pay for it when he returned.
But one day I saw my reality and said:
"Francia, life changes. If he stays there, you stay here... with a baby, no career, and dependent forever."
So I went to the university with my mother and my baby.
I asked if they would allow me to return the next trimester without losing my scholarship.
I succeeded. But that cost me a full year of my degree.
📐 Mathematics… you again
In the first trimester, everything was going well.
In the second, Mathematics 2 and Introduction to Physics arrived.
And with them… my trauma.
I had a professor they called “Ramón Retiro” (imagine that! 😅).
He was an excellent teacher, he explained things clearly, and I understood everything.
But at exam time… I froze.
I'd put plantains where yuca should be.
It had been like that since high school.
My medals were "for effort," never "for merit."
🧠 I discovered something I had never told
I went to change majors.
Crying, I said I couldn't handle math.
Three professors and the director met, and they sent me to the university psychologist.
It was there, between therapies and talks, that I discovered something very important:
My brain blocked half the information during exams.
As if one side of my visual memory would shut down.
So I developed a method:
Learn the formulas in separate halves, and then mentally connect them.
It worked!
And even my psychologist, years later, told me in the university yard:
"If that works for you, stick with it."
💸 Surviving without income... and with a baby
Meanwhile, I had no way to support myself.
I went to FUNDAPEC and took out a loan for living expenses.
I asked my family for help as collateral... many told me no.
In the end, a cousin of my husband, who didn't even know me, helped me.
She said:
"I will help you because no one helped me when I needed it."
I met her two years later.
🛒 And so the stationery store was born
Loans have to be paid back.
I couldn't get a job, or I would lose my scholarship.
So I decided to sell whatever I could think of.
One day, my dad had an empty space in his grocery store that he was going to rent out to a bank.
I asked him to let me have it.
And he said:
"That's yours."
And that's how my stationery store was born.
💬 And you?
Have you had to keep going when everything seemed against you?
Does it make sense that academics don't reflect what you really know?
I'm listening.
Because sometimes, sharing what we keep silent about... frees us.
And other times, it helps someone who is right where you once were.