{"id":16597,"date":"2016-06-13T11:03:08","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T15:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/news\/article.php?ArticleID=16597"},"modified":"2016-06-13T11:03:08","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T15:03:08","slug":"16597_the-heartwarming-story-behind-this-n-j-mom-s-graduation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/2016\/06\/13\/16597_the-heartwarming-story-behind-this-n-j-mom-s-graduation\/","title":{"rendered":"The heartwarming story behind this N.J. mom&#8217;s graduation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>NEWARK \u2014 In the summer of 1993, Maritza Rivera was working a full-time job while raising two young sons and going to college part time.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>A political science major, Rivera hoped to take a few classes each semester, earn a degree from Montclair State University and attend law school, she said. But that all changed when she found out she was pregnant. &quot;Having a new baby takes a lot of time for a mom,&quot; said Rivera, who stopped taking classes that summer. &quot;I really didn&#8217;t think I was going to ever go back to school.&quot;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, 23 years after she walked away from her dream of becoming a lawyer, Rivera donned a black cap and gown at Montclair State&#8217;s commencement ceremony after finally earning her degree in political science.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nj.com\/education\/2016\/05\/montclair_state_commencement_mother_and_son_gradua.html\" target=\"_blank\">Read the full story<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read the full story on NJ.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":116597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-77_alumni-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}