This Mother-Daughter Duo Is Tackling College Together

When Alegría Lopez graduated from Miami Southwest Senior High School last summer, she didn’t want to go to college.

Despite having a passion for environmental conservation, the then 17-year-old, who suffers from anxiety, didn’t know what to major in.

“The constant reminder of ‘there’s so much to do’ paralyzes me and makes me not want to do anything because I’m like—’Where do I start?’” Alegría said. “After graduation, I needed to take a break from school and think about what I wanted to do.”

However, her mother—Kimberly Ann Veber-Lopez—wanted Alegría to seize the moment, but she realized the message was hypocritical because she dropped out of college in 1998.

“Here I am telling her, ‘look, you need to go to school, you need to do this, do that,’ but I didn’t finish,” recalls Kimberly, who attended North and Kendall campuses. “How serious is she going to take me?” 

So the 47-year-old proposed this plan: they would attend classes together.

Last spring, Kimberly and Alegría enrolled at Kendall Campus to pursue an associate’s degree in environmental science and business administration, respectively. 

The duo took intro to computer technology and applications and psychology of personal effectiveness. This summer, they signed up for earth science and U.S. history.

“Ultimately, this is for her, it’s not for me,” Kimberly said. “Anyday, I could be gone, but the decisions she makes [are] what’s going to dictate her future. She has to be vested in her future for herself, not for me or anyone else.”

The computer course has been the most challenging because it required understanding of terms like pixelization and RAM memory.

“I was like, ‘holy crap, what did we get ourselves into?’” Kimberly recalled. 

Despite being mother and daughter, their study habits and personalities differ drastically. 

For Kimberly—who is a wife, mother of three and a foster care recruiter at Citrus Family Care Services—organization and timeliness are key. She’s a social butterfly and a note-taker who uses pens, highlighters, sticky notes and checklists.

Alegría is an introvert. She’s an auditory/visual learner who “loves to procrastinate” and seldom takes notes. However, her mom’s proactive nature has inspired the 19-year-old to become a better student.

“Since she has the mindset to get things done, [she’s] able to give me warnings about assignments…she doesn’t have the fear that I do of ‘where do I start?’ She just starts,” Alegría said. 

Even their fashion tastes and mannerisms differ. 

In class, Kimberly—who typically wears blouses, skirts and sneakers and has her hair in a bun or ponytail—sits upright, paying attention to lectures “like a soldier.”

Alegría, on the other hand, opts for shark slides, yoga pants and T-shirts and sports her curly hair down. She often leans against the wall or stretches her feet onto a chair—until her mom gives her the side-eye. 

The pair doesn’t study together often, but they hold each other accountable. During their psychology course, they competed to see who finished assignments faster and earned a higher grade. 

“It would be nice to have that sort of closeness, [where] your daughter’s chill with you being in a learning environment with your peers,” said Kendall Campus professor Ximena Barrientos, who taught the earth science course they took.

 This fall, they are taking introduction to communications together.

After completing their degrees, Kimberly plans to transfer to Florida International University to pursue a bachelor’s degree in communications and public administration, while Alegría hopes to start working in the environmental field.

But for now, one thing is certain—Alegría is capable of keeping the pact she made with her mom when they started taking classes together last spring.

“She’s been able to prove, without me prompting her, that she’s comfortable going up to a professor and asking for clarification for something, so I don’t have any doubt in my mind that she’ll continue doing that, whether she’s with me or not,” Kimberly said. “That was the whole goal; yes, we’re mother and daughter, but this is hers. She has ownership of it.”

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