Free It Ain't Over by Marlo Thomas Page A

devastated to learn that all of her academic records had been lost. That’s two years of my life just thrown away.
    Maria decided to take some time to consider her options. “My grandparents were living in New Jersey, and my grandfather had just passed away. My grandma needed someone to help her for a while, so I told my parents I would go, and I got a visa.”
    Over the next few years in the States, Maria picked up any kind of work she could find: answering phones for her aunt’s mortgage business, babysitting a neighbor’s kids, cleaning offices. Often, the work was part-time or temporary, so she moved around a lot, cobbling together a living. Although she missed her parents desperately, Maria couldn’t imagine returning home. “There were no opportunities for me in Peru that seemed worth going back for.”
    In 1993, Maria married a man she’d met through friends in Peru. Americo was a college graduate who had worked as a P.E. teacher in their home country; though he had his green card, his English wasn’t very good, so his opportunities in the States were limited. After they wed, Maria got a green card, too, and three years later Melissa was born. Soon after, she and Americo moved to Florida, both for the weather and for the prospect of better schools for Melissa.
    But in Florida, Maria and Americo could find jobs only in a factory making plastic bags. “It was awful,” says Maria. “Florida is so hot in the summer, and I was working in this cramped area with big loud machines and no air-conditioning. I felt like I was in a sauna.”
    After a few months, Maria couldn’t take it anymore. She had to find something—anything—else. So once more, she began looking for work anywhere she could find it: housekeeping at a nursing home, cashiering at a local supermarket. She even found a contract job delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service.
    “I spent so many years hopping from job to job, and even though some of them were enjoyable, they never felt like something I wanted to do forever,” she says.
    Maria often met other immigrants in the same situation—overqualified for the low-skill work they were doing. “But they all seemed to be resigned to it,” she says. “No one ever expressed wanting to move on, to become a professional. But I just couldn’t imagine spending my entire life like this.
    “I’d always told Melissa how important it was to get her education, but I had the same goal for myself. I thought that someday I’d finish my studies, but it just never seemed like the right time to go back.”
    Then, in 2009, Maria took a job as a pre-K teacher’s aide. A coworker who wanted to improve her English asked Maria to go with her to visit nearbyHodges University. When they arrived, the admissions officer asked, “Why are you two looking for English classes? Your English is good! You need to come to college and get a degree!”
    “As soon as she said that,” Maria says, “I got excited. I thought, Maybe now is the time. ” Melissa was just starting high school, and Americo had recently been promoted from head custodian to building supervisor at his school, which meant he could be home when Melissa got out of school every day.
    The admissions officer told Maria and her friend that they’d need to come back and take an entrance exam, similar to the SAT. The following week, Maria arrived ready for the test, but her friend never showed. “I think she was scared,” says Maria, who admits she was a little intimidated herself. “The test was three hours long, and every hour that passed, my headache grew bigger and bigger. I was freaking out, thinking, I should have studied more! I can’t remember anything from my time at the university all those years ago! ”
    The most challenging part of the test was the essay. The topic: Why do you want to go back to school? “I wrote about how I wanted to be an example for Melissa,” says Maria. “I wrote, ‘If I can show her that I can do this, she will