A long road
Abreena Tompkins holds a copy of her dissertation, which is now being
used as an educational model.
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Abreena Tompkins acquires her doctorate after 19 years of toil
By HANNAH SMITH
Staff Intern
Family was always first priority for Abreena Tompkins. That is why
she first decided to become a full-time mom, then later realized that
in order to better support her family she would have to make a change
in her own life.
"Eating was really something we had grown accustomed to," Tompkins
joked of the financially tight period after the birth of her youngest
child. "We decided that instead of getting a job, I would go back to
college as an investment."
Now, 19 years, four degrees, and three grown children after the
grueling journey toward her undergraduate degree began, Tompkins
earned her doctorate in a fashion that could be described as anything
but conventional.
The journey was "a God trip," Tompkins stated, "People ask me how I
did it and I tell them that I always prayed for the energy and
intellect to do it. It has been divine intervention every step of the
way."
This intervention first began while she was helping her mother cater
dinner and cocktail parties at Roaring Gap. It was there that she met
Doris Eller, the alumni director at Salem College in Winston-Salem,
who made a deal with her. "If I went to Surry Community College for
two years, she would help me go to Salem," said Tompkins, "I went to
Surry on a promise."
According to Tompkins, before she had time to think, she was enrolled
as a part-time student at SCC in Dobson in 1988, when her youngest
child, was 17 months old. It was important for her that her career as
a student remain separate from her responsibility as a mother. She
did not want her new workload to affect her children or detract from
the time she spent with them.
Tompkins studied only while her children, Aaron Ray, Hunter and
Kayla, were napping or in the middle of the night when they were
sleeping. "The kids never saw a book in my hands for two years
because I didn't want it to interrupt their lives," she recalled.
Despite her lack of sleep due to early morning study sessions,
Tompkins said that she always felt well-rested when she was with her
children.
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