A 57-year-old grandmother of 12 who admitted that college “was a rough four years” will graduate from a historically black college or university alongside hundreds of students on Saturday.

Meet Darlene Pitts, she’s a 57-year old hardworking woman in pursuit of higher education living in Norfolk, Virginia. During her time at college, she was working two jobs. But she had to “quit her job at a Kroger grocery store and focused on her schoolwork and her job as a special education teaching assistant at a local high school” after she discovered that she was placed on academic probation.

Pitts told The Virginia-Pilot that “I came to work in tears because I got a letter saying I was on academic probation.”

“Some of the classes, they were really rough,” Pitts added. “I was ready to throw in the towel. I just wanted to call it quits, but I just hung in there.”

Pitts will graduate from historically black Norfolk State University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and hopes to become a full-time special education teacher as well as probably continue her career as a student, according to The Virginia-Pilot.

“I love being in a classroom,” Pitts said. “I love being a student.”

Norfolk State University was founded in 1935.

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