15 years later, Lynner finishing high school with Project Enable

LYNN – When Shelly Palmer received her GED in December almost 15 years after dropping out of high school to have two children, the Lynn resident pushed it aside without fanfare.”I wasn’t excited because I knew I had it in me,” the now-30-year-old said on a rainy May evening while staring out a window of the third floor of the North Shore Community College’s Lynn campus.And when Palmer receives her degree on May 15 for completing Project Enable, an introductory semester to North Shore Community College for GED recipients, she’ll push that aside as well.After years of unstable jobs and failed attempts to go back to school, the single mother said she will settle for nothing less than a college degree.”I never thought I’d be here so I gotta embrace it,” she said.Palmer, who moved to the United States from Jamaica when she was six, dropped out of high school at age 16 to have a child, after bouncing around at Lynn Classical and Malden High.That’s what all her friends were doing, she said.”Getting pregnant, I thought that was cooler,” she said. “I thought that was the ?it’ thing to do.”She had another child at age 19. And only then did Palmer realize she’d made a mistake.”At 19 I thought, ?Here I am, having two children, and I don’t have a high school diploma and can’t get a job,'” she said. “That’s bad. That’s a recipe for disaster.”But Palmer didn’t get her act together right away. She took classes to earn her GED but failed the final test by one point twice.”I wasn’t as motivated then as I am now,” she said.While Palmer was failing to earn her GED, she was urging her children, now 11 and 13-year-old middle school students in Lynn, to study hard and do well in school.The juxtaposition didn’t sit well with her or her children.”My children came to me and said, ?If you want us to succeed, why don’t you try to succeed?'” she said.That’s when something clicked for Palmer, who is expecting a third child in October.”They were right,” she said. “If I want them to do better, why am I not doing better?”She signed up for GED classes at Lynn’s Robert L. Ford School and, with her children’s help, put all her efforts into passing the test.The success felt good and motivated her to keep going, Palmer said. So she enrolled at North Shore Community College, her childhood dreams of being a forensic scientist reignited.She missed only one class all semester – even returning from Jamaica after her father died to take a test – and will likely pass Project Enable with a B average.But Palmer’s not celebrating yet.”I’m like, ?What’s next?'” she said. “I’m ready for the next semester.”Dave Romanowski, who teaches a GED course at the Ford School, said when students like Palmer are inspired to reach success, nothing can stop them.”They know how far behind they are and they know how hurt they are in life, and they’ve had it and they want to do something about it,” he said.Palmer plans to study biotechnology at the community college this fall. She’s already researching internships in her field and said she can’t wait to make the switch from supply stocker at a department store to mixing chemicals in a lab.Her instructor at Project Enable, Babo Edwards, said Palmer has seized on the confidence she’s found in herself.”Shelly is someone who is right at the point in her life where she’s ready to learn and ready to believe in herself and ready to pursue whatever goal she sets for herself,” Edwards said.Palmer agrees. She said she’s learned through this process that most of the obstacles she has faced in life have come from within.”I set my bar extremely high, and the only person that can bring me down is me,” she said.She’s also developed a motto that keeps her going: “Patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet.”Palmer said it epitomizes her newfound belief that the rewards that come from hard work are worth every struggle.”When you get through that thing that you thought you couldn’t get through, it feels so joyful, it feels so sweet, and nothing can take that