We’ve been talking to Idaho students who have recently graduated from high school about what’s on their minds as they prepare for the next chapters in their lives.
Kassandra Ibarra got pregnant at 16. She dropped out of high school, but after her son was born she decided she needed an education to give him “the future he deserves.” When she got pregnant again she stayed in school and recently graduated from Boise’s Marian Pritchett School.
She says going to school pregnant was difficult, especially after most of her family wrote her off. She’d go to school and come home to take care of her son and her boyfriend worked hard to support the young family. Ibarra says she has a lot of worries.
“I have to worry about my kids, I have to worry about how things are going to get paid. I have to worry about a lot of stuff,” she says. “Most 18 year olds don’t. They still have their parents. They still… have freedom. And I really don’t.”
Mostly she worries about the future; that she won’t be able to take care of her kids. That’s why, she says, she has to get more education. She doesn’t want to have to rely on anyone. She plans to go to the College of Western Idaho next January and become a dental assistant, and someday a hygienist. She says she wants to give her kids a better life than she's had.
Ibarra often says she can’t think about herself. But when pressed, she does admit shyly, “I do have some dreams.” She dreams of having the kind of family she wished she had as a child. In her daydreams she cooks dinner and sits down with her son and daughter and boyfriend for a peaceful meal. In short she wants “that perfect family.”
Ibarra's next step is college. She says she knows she can do it, she has to. Plus she says, “I want to show the world I can do it.”