Most people have a hard enough time staying focused in school during a regular school year. Senior Artnecia Ramirez knows exactly what this feels like, probably more than the average student. She is not only going to school full-time as a business administration major but she is also raising Makyla Preston, her 2-year-old daughter, on her own.

Ramirez, 22, has been in college non-stop since her freshman year. Because she gave birth to her daughter over the summer, she never took off any time from school .

“Education is important to me,” Ramirez explained. “The odds were against me because everyone expected me to drop out.” Dropping out of school is the last thing she wanted to do.

Ramirez is continuing her education even though it is hard for her to maintain 15 units per semester, work 25 hours per week and raise a child.The most frustrating part about being a single mother, Ramirez said, is not being able to give Makyla the attention she deserves.

“I can’t play with her because I have to study.”

When Ramirez gets home after work or school, she has to feed her daughter, bathe her and put her to bed. “And after that, I am tired!” Ramirez said.Raising a child alone as a full-time student seems very difficult and hard to manage with limited help. “I don’t really ask for help that much,” Ramirez said. She has friends that watch Makyla from time to time, and her mother, who lives in Fresno, keeps her over the summer. However, Ramirez has no family in Sacramento, which limits her resources for help.

One of the resources she does use is the service provided by the Associated Students Inc. Children’s Center on campus. The Children’s Center offers affordable and convenient child care for student, staff and faculty parents. This service is important because “having reliable child care is the determining factor to getting a degree,” Children’s Center Director Denise Wessels said.

A family with two parents is much easier to uphold because there is an extra person helping out.

“When they are the only person in that child’s life, there is no other person to share the responsibility,” said Wessels, a single parent whose children are now adults. “I have a full understanding of what it’s like to raise children on my own.”

One may wonder where the fathers are in these single-mother families. Ramirez said that Makyla’s father is inconsistent in providing for his daughter. He lives in Oakland and rarely visits his daughter or financially supports her needs.

Thanksgiving is a time when families get together and a time to appreciate all the positive things in life. As for Ramirez, this Thanksgiving holiday she will be getting time off from school to “relax and catch up on studying. Ramirez feels bad because most of the time she cannot give Makyla all of her attention.

“I refuse to neglect her,” Ramirez said. “She made me stop and realize why I am here. I became more focused because of her.”

From her experiences of raising a child on her own, Ramirez, in the future, hopes to start a program for single mothers in college that offers grant and scholarship money, support for single parents and counseling for lonely mothers. Most people think that single parents get more financial aid money but, Ramirez said, that is simply not true.

“I got the same amount of financial aid money before and after I had my daughter,” she said.

Ramirez wants to teach her daughter the importance of education. “If I get a master’s, I want her to get a Ph.D.”

She also wants Makyla to have inner confidence so that she will never have to rely on a man for anything.

“The only man I rely on is God,” Ramirez says. Ramirez’s advice for other single parents is to never give up.

“It can be done and what doesn’t kill you only makes you a stronger person in the end.”

Lisa Warren can be reached at [email protected]