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LAS CRUCES - Veronica Martinez put her life - and her dream of being a nurse - on hold when she was just 18 and discovered she was pregnant. She dropped out of high school. She got married. And she found herself in 2005 divorced, living in a tiny mobile home in a bad neighborhood with two boys - ages 5 and 8 - and a job flipping burgers.
"I had to do something for me and my boys," she said. "Working at Whataburger wasn't cutting it."
She enrolled in school, thinking she might be able to, eventually, become a nurse's assistant. It was not easy.
"From the first day that I went to school, it was just shock," she said. "The amount of homework we got, from the first day, the amount we had to learn and studying and exams, it was overwhelming. I cried in the shower a couple times."
But with help from her family, fellow students and teachers - and her fiancé, whom she met soon after school started - on Friday night, she and just six students from her original class of 20 walked across the stage at Do-a Ana Community College's East Mesa Campus as graduate nurses, ready to take the licensing test to become registered nurses. Saturday morning, about 950 New Mexico State University students (about 1,000 other fall graduates did not attend) celebrated the culmination of their own struggles, wars, sleepless nights and uncertain days at their 2010
"Self-doubt and fear," he said, "will do more to shape the rest of your lives than virtually any other feeling."
Don't be complacent, he said. Don't settle. Don't underestimate your potential, he said. To succeed, brains aren't even the biggest part of the equation, he said: "You simply need to fear failure less."
Even Michael Jordan missed shots - thousands of them, many of them taking the game with them, Gordon said, echoing the basketball star's words.
"I can accept failure," Jordan said. "Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."
So don't freeze, procrastinate, lower your sights, or make safer choices with smaller payoffs, Gordon said.
"You will simply allow someone to succeed in your place."
A successful businessman, Gordon is now a retired corporate executive, serving most recently as vice president of finance and corporate planning of the Celgene Corporation, a New Jersey-based biopharmaceutical company.
Now 31, engaged and living in a real house just outside Mesilla, Martinez is no longer scared about her ability to provide for her family's future. Her sights are high.
"There was definitely a point, halfway, where I thought, 'Is this really for me?' because it's so overwhelming ... but the more I learned and the more hands-on it got, you have that moment of like, 'Wow. I know this stuff,'" she marveled Saturday. "It's not even about the skills, it's just the overall care; you walk into a patient's room and they're not responding, what do I do? People's lives are in my hands."
The experience has taught her that anything is possible, she said: "If I can do it, anybody can do it."
Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462.
