Upon graduating from Shawnee Mission West High School, Alejandra Sandoval Marquez had no college plans, even though she wanted to pursue higher education. She did not know where to start, nor did her mother, Maria Marquez (who herself did not attend college). Then Maria Marquez received an accidental phone call that would change her daughter’s life.
When an Admissions Counselor accidentally called the wrong household, Maria Marquez informed the counselor that she had the wrong home, but that that Marquez did have a daughter graduating from high school. One thing led to another, and soon Sandoval Marquez began courses at Donnelly College.
Sandoval Marquez flourished at Donnelly, where she was a Student Ambassador, member of the Drill Team and a math tutor. She graduated in May 2016 with an Associate of Science and will begin a bachelor’s program in nursing this fall at the University of St. Mary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Yet her path to graduation was not without hurdles.
“I was beginning to lose my faith,” she said. “I was in a really dark place. Things were just adding up; I felt like I was depressed. So I started praying, and God started answering my prayers.”
As many will recall, Sandoval Marquez spoke on a panel of students at SHINE 2014, where she shared her story of coming to Donnelly and how it impacted her life. What some may not know is that at the time, Sandoval Marquez was pregnant.
Although excited to start a family, Sandoval Marquez worried that she would have to drop out of school. When she voiced this concern to faculty and staff at Donnelly, they assured her, “you will be back.” She took the spring 2015 semester off, still uncertain of her future in higher education.
“Getting pregnant at a young age, people always say, ‘You’re not going to do anything with your life,’” Sandoval Marquez noted. “And those are harsh words. For a long time during my pregnancy, I thought, ‘Maybe they’re right.’
“My advice to other girls would be: Don’t stop trying. You have to keep going.”
That spring, Sandoval Marquez gave birth to her daughter, Melanie. Through becoming a parent, she discovered her passion for the nursing field. As a mother, she rebuilt her relationship with her own mother and found to finish what she started at Donnelly. Sandoval Marquez returned to Donnelly that fall and found the same small class sizes, helpful instructors and family atmosphere she had come to love.
“Education is something nobody can take away from you,” she said. “People at Donnelly had confidence in me. In a way, they knew me better than I knew myself.”
Channeling her own labor experience, Sandoval Marquez hopes to earn her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at St. Mary and become a labor and delivery nurse so that she can care for women and their new babies.
“I just hope that when I finish nursing school, I will be someone other girls can look up to,” she said. “They’ll think, ‘If she can do it, then I know I can do it.’”
In the meantime, Sandoval Marquez works at Lakeview Village in Lenexa as a CNA working with dementia and Alzheimer’s patients — using both Melanie and her two younger brothers for encouragement when balancing school, work and parenting becomes challenging.
“When I’m tired or just want to give up, I look at her,” Sandoval Marquez said of Melanie. “Just watching her, I know that I have to have a better future for her and for myself. She motivates me.”
The support from staff and faculty at Donnelly helped Sandoval Marquez reach the first of many goals and put her on the path toward reaching her dream career.
“Little things at Donnelly really touched me,” she said. “[Instructors and staff] knew I was going to come back before I did. I knew they were going to help me every step of the way.”
Using strength and confidence from her experience at Donnelly, Sandoval Marquez is excited for the challenge of nursing classes this fall.
“This is just the beginning,” she said. “I have so much to do.”