Akash Sama­roo

Grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies can some­times be a stuffy af­fair.

Re­marks from the prin­ci­pal, a some­times un­re­lat­able guest speak­er and a vale­dic­to­ri­an whose pres­ence on the lectern serves as a re­minder that you were not the most out­stand­ing per­son in your year.

But Se­le­na Rooplal changed pro­ceed­ings when the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) host­ed its 2022 grad­u­ates for its Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion Fac­ul­ty.

When ca­lyp­son­ian Lord Nel­son broke in­to song af­ter he was con­ferred with an hon­orary doc­tor­ate, it was the 23-year-old Rooplal that ‘start­ed the dance.’

Her moves en­cour­aged oth­ers to shake a leg and very soon the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence venue re­sem­bled Fan­tas­tic Fri­day.

But one can ex­cuse Rooplal for break­ing the for­mal­i­ties when you un­der­stand what she went through to don the blue robes.

For the Freeport woman, get­ting her Span­ish de­gree was more than just a per­son­al ac­com­plish­ment.

“Be­ing the on­ly child in the fam­i­ly to reach ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion, I re­al­ly want­ed to pur­sue my goals and make my fam­i­ly proud,” Rooplal told Guardian Me­dia.

But her jour­ney would not be an easy one. And a ma­jor added re­spon­si­bil­i­ty came in the form of her biggest bless­ing. Be­cause it would be on the eve of her third and fi­nal year that Rooplal and her hus­band Dhar­men­dra would learn that a ba­by is on the way.

Rooplal said she was faced with a de­ci­sion. And for some the most ob­vi­ous sac­ri­fice would have been school, but Rooplal said she was de­ter­mined to do it all.

“I told my­self I am keep­ing this ba­by and I am not tak­ing a break (from school) be­cause I knew if I stopped, I wouldn’t fin­ish, so I made the sac­ri­fice, I got help from my par­ents and it mo­ti­vat­ed me a lot be­cause at that stage I just had a few months to fin­ish.”

But as op­ti­mistic as the Span­ish ma­jor was, the road trav­elled was full of ob­sta­cles.

“I would of­ten won­der how am I go­ing to get time to do my ex­ams, when I have to go to clin­ic I had to resched­ule my ex­ams, one time I did an oral ex­am in the car. Some­times I would not have time to eat, be­cause I on­ly had time to see about the ba­by and do my school work.”

Rooplal said a ma­jor mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor was al­so know­ing that the de­gree would bring her one step clos­er to be­com­ing a teacher and that would mean fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty for her son Aryan.

She cred­it­ed her hus­band for sup­port­ing her dreams and be­ing the sole bread­win­ner for the fam­i­ly dur­ing her preg­nan­cy and the pur­suit of her de­gree.

“He worked Sun­day to Sun­day, twelve-hour shifts, it was he who got every­thing for us, not many peo­ple have that and I am thank­ful for that.”

Rooplal is now hop­ing that oth­er young women will be in­spired by her ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Do not let preg­nan­cy or any­thing else hin­der your ed­u­ca­tion, if I can do it, you can do it as well, and don’t let words of neg­a­tive peo­ple get to you, you fol­low your heart, you know what you want and you go for­ward.”

Rooplal said the plan now is to fo­cus on be­ing a moth­er to young Aryan while she ap­plies to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. She told Guardian Me­dia that she is pos­i­tive she will re­alise her pro­fes­sion­al dreams and giv­en her jour­ney so far it would be a brave per­son to bet against her.