Over the course of sixty years, Patricia Sias Ellis has finally accomplished her ambition of graduating from college.
According to 11Alive, Ellis, who is now 79 years old, walked across the graduation stage at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia, on Saturday, May 10, sixty years after she had put her family ahead of her education when she was attending college. Ellis was able to fulfill her own ambition and accomplish her goal of earning a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice after spending years working and providing financial support for the college careers of both her husband and her son.
She told the publication, “I always knew I wasn’t finished,” and she was right.
“I didn’t feel like I had ever finished any of the stuff that I had started,” Ellis said in an interview with CNN/WXIA.
A news footage from 11Alive shows Ellis grinning as she puts on her graduation gown and blue hat. The film was taken after Ellis had finished putting on her attire. “These experiences I should have had at 19 or 20 years old — they are the same at 79 years old,” she said to me.
According to CNN/WXIA, Ellis’s return to college started eight years ago when she enrolled at Atlanta Metro College. She eventually moved to Clayton State before continuing her education there.
After her son made a joke about her being “wearing a hole in his sofa watching soap operas all day,” she made the choice to go back to work, as she said to CNN/WXIA. “And I said I am not getting a job,” Ellis continued, “and he told her that getting a job or going back to school might be both more productive than going back to school.”
With just a few courses each semester, Ellis was able to finish her degree in a methodical and steady manner. In 2022, she was confronted with an unanticipated obstacle when medical professionals detected a tumor on her kidney that weighed ten pounds, as reported by 11Alive. She was motivated to get her degree, so she enrolled in additional courses after she had surgery.
“I just had a good time, in this whole process — especially this last year when I realized it’s really going to happen,” she said to the news organization, adding, “I’ve just been over the moon.”
Ellis’s dogged determination has served as a source of motivation for the many members of the Clayton State community, including Dr. Georj Lewis, the president of the institution. In an interview with 11Alive, Lewis said that Ellis “lights up the room,” and that he will most likely also light up the graduation ceremony.
“When she crosses that stage, everyone is probably going to stand up,” he informed the site before the event actually took place. “Because she’s hard not to know.”
Following the completion of her most recent accomplishment, Ellis is maintaining her flexibility. At the moment, she is concentrating on making a positive contribution to her community by using the information and experience that she earned at Clayton State, which she now considers to be “the best years of my life.” However, she is contemplating enrolling in a master’s degree in the future.
