Lorelei Aquino, a 44-year-old college student graduated from the University of the Philippines over the weekend and marched with a sablay (graduation sash) alongside her two children, Mark Romeo Aquino and Lorielle Ann Aquino.
“Believe in the beauty of your dreams. They are our realities in waiting,” it says in the head of Lorelei’s blog called Mom on a Mission. And luckily, she turned her dream of becoming a college graduate with a degree in business management into a reality.
On Saturday, Lorelei shared her inspiring story of how she obtained her long overdue diploma, which earned her cheers:
“Wow! You truly are amazing! Congratulations, Super Mom!” wrote Des del Fin.
Maisara Dandamun-Latiph said: “Such an inspiring story. Congratulations to you all and Roel for being a very good father and husband.”
Marie Fe added, “Congratulations sis. Your hardwork (sic) has paved off. God bless.”
Another commenter wrote: Wow sis Lorelei! So amazing! How admirable! Very inspiring! So proud of you and happy for you! I honor and salute you! Congratulations and God bless you more!”
One said that it was hard for her to stop reading because she was “hooked” to the story: “Wow sister Lei, this is so inspiring. Congratulations, it was hard to stop reading because I was really hooked from start to finish. Happy for you and your family!”
Lorelei admitted in her blog that math had always been a challenging subject for her, failing a number of math classes in the early 90s. During her last semester in 1994, she had to drop the subject with her being pregnant and a working student at the time.
“Before I knew it, more than two decades had already passed me by,” she wrote.
When two of her children were about to graduate from UP, she decided to take up calculus or “Math 100,” the only class she had left to finish.
It wasn’t easy for Lorelei to be back in school, having to juggle the responsibilities of being a mother and a student who had to endure the commute from Bulacan to the UP Diliman Extension Program in Clark, Pampanga.
In her blog, she recalled how her schoolmates were very young and how she was usually referred to as tita (aunt). A professor would also call her ma’am out of respect.
She also recounted how she felt “humiliated” when she’d come to her son for tutoring.
Once, Lorelei ended up failing an exam, which she attributed to her anxiety. She recalled having “difficulty breathing” while taking the test.
But failing didn’t stop her. It only pushed her to succeed even more when she enrolled for the same class in UP’s Diliman campus the next semester.
“With my children as my inspiration, I went ahead and kept going,” she added.
After two semesters at the Diliman campus, she finished the class and achieved the feat of many others — graduating.
And it was a family milestone.
Both of her children graduated cum laude in the same ceremony on Sunday — Mark Romeo with a degree in chemical engineering and while Lorielle Ann had a degree in biology.
