Milestones

Like so many high school graduates, Terri-Lee Kuptana (pictured in red dress) was a bundle of tears walking through the crowd in the graduation ceremony.

The 43-year-old grandmother was there to graduate alongside her 19-year-old son, Muk.

“There were a lot of mixed emotions,” said Terri-Lee about the graduation ceremony. “A little bit of shame, a lot of pride, a lot of sense of accomplishment. A lot of proving to myself that again, if you put your mind to something you can accomplish it.”

She dropped out of Grollier Hall in 1995 just months before graduating Grade 12. She was pregnant and due in summer. Young mothers were shunned or talked about more in those days, she said. Despite her strong grades, she decided to drop out that spring.

She went on to have another daughter in 1998 and a son in 2000.

Though she had no Grade 12 diploma, her high transcript marks allowed her entry into an office administration certificate program (2017). She graduated the diploma program in 2009.

Plans to return and complete a business administration diploma were sidelined when her mother ended up with cancer, which she battled from 2009 to 2016. Terri-Lee, husband, daughter and son moved in to help take care of her.

She had clearly found educational and career success despite no Grade 12, but the lack of that one achievement left a hollow taste in Terri-Lee’s mouth about her own advice to her children.

“You tell your kids their whole lives right from kindergarten that school is important,” said Terri-Lee. “I thought it was improper for me to be telling that to my kids all their lives sitting there with no diploma, when all I needed was Social 30 all these years.”

Hopes to graduate with her daughter in 2016 were overwhelmed by responsibilities as a wife, mother and grandmother, as Terri-Lee worked and took care of her family, while also travelling with her mother for chemotherapy treatments.

Instead, she targeted the 2019 graduation, to mark the achievement in the same year as her son.

“I was really emotional (at the ceremony), as we both were thinking of my mom and how much she stressed the importance of education,” she said.

The Tuktoyaktuk District Education Authority afforded her the ability to take the class she needed and complete the work in the evenings, for which Terri-Lee is very thankful.

Going back to school – at any age – is scary, she admitted.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen. But once your foot is in the door and you’ve got that determination and willingness to do what you need to get done, all those thoughts fade away.”

---------------------------------------------

Terri-Lee dedicates her diploma to her parents, her husband, but most importantly – her daughter and son.