Support system keeps nursing student on track to December commencement

Thanks, however, to her own perseverance and a steady stream of support and encouragement she received from the Amarillo College community, Peters achieved her dream and found success.

Peters’ vocational nursing credential will be one of 980 degrees and certificates conferred when Amarillo College conducts its fall 2017 Commencement ceremony on Friday, Dec. 15 at the Amarillo Civic Center.

The ceremony begins at 7 p.m. in the Civic Center Coliseum and includes the awarding of certificates and degrees completed both last summer and this fall.

“It’s really exciting,” Peters said of her approaching graduation. “There were people who told me I would never be able to do this, so I was on a sort of a mission to prove them wrong.”

They told her higher education was beyond her financial grasp, but she worked innumerable long hours and received assistance from AC’s Financial Aid Office, the AC Foundation, and the AC Food Pantry.

They told her that a 65-percent bilateral hearing loss would forestall a nursing career, but AC’s Disability Services loaned her an amplified stethoscope designed for medical professionals with hearing loss, and she excelled.

“Oh, I cried a few times when things didn’t go just right,” Peters admits. “I called my husband in Cloudcroft plenty of times to tell him that I was thinking of quitting and coming home, that I missed him and our daughter, and each time he talked me out of it.

“But honestly, if I hadn’t received such incredible support from so many awesome people and professors at Amarillo College, I never would have finished. They made it possible.”

Peters lived in Amarillo with her husband’s aunt and uncle during the year she spent at AC. Throughout the first semester, she drove home on weekends and worked 16-hour shifts in the record-keeping department at a local hospital.

Next time she makes that drive from Amarillo to Cloudcroft, she’ll have a vocational nursing certificate in hand and a wealth of confidence in her heart.

“The teachers here at AC almost pushed me beyond my limits, but I know that no program or faculty anywhere could have encouraged me more or prepared me better to work as a nurse,” she said. “I believe I was called to nursing, and I believe that Amarillo College was exactly the right place for me to get my start.”