This college student’s path hasn’t been easy. She needs a little help to get her degree
Deandra Joseph was only 13 when she went to a doctor’s appointment with her grandmother and learned the person who raised her had breast cancer.
She went to chemotherapy sessions with her and watched her slowly decline over the next few years.
By the time Deandra was 16, the teen — who was already struggling with keeping up in school at William H. Turner Technical Arts High — had to face her grandmother’s death.
“When she passed, I got in a deep depression,” said Deandra, who is now 23, enrolled at Miami Dade College and one day dreams of owning a pharmaceutical company. “It’s been really hard, but I feel like I am finally where I should be.”
Joseph has come a long way and is now on a path to fulfilling her dreams. Help with getting professional clothing and school books would keep her on the right path, said Janelle Sales, the program coordinator for Casa Valentina who nominated Joseph for Miami Herald’s Wish Book program.
In the past year — with the help of Casa Valentina, a nonprofit organization that helps young women and men who are homeless find housing and learn life skills — Joseph has maintained A’s and B’s in her classes, held down a job and learned how to live on a budget.
Sales said she picked Joseph for Wish Book because of how far the young woman has come in such a short time.
“She is really hustling,” she said. “There has been a huge turnaround.”
Deandra Joseph grew up in Little Haiti with her grandparents and a brother and sister. Neither her mother or father were in her life. Creole was her first language.
She said she remembers elementary school as a happy time, but “things got tough” when she got to middle school and high school.
Around the time Joseph became a teenager, Schelo Doirin came into her life.
Doirin, who is with the mentorship group Walk My Shoes, said the word that comes to her mind in describing Joseph is resilience.
“She always manages to push through and come out on the other side,” said Doirin, who said Joseph would also benefit from exposure to different cultures and activities outside of the bubble she grew up in.
“Deandra loves to learn but she just hasn’t had the chance to see what’s out there,” she said.
Joseph said she often wanted to give up on her dreams, but something in her wouldn’t allow that to happen.
She managed to study hard and get help. And by taking night classes, she became the first in her family to graduate from high school. She was nearly 21.
But she wasn’t done yet.
She began the process of enrolling in Miami Dade College, where she was met with a new set of roadblocks. She didn’t have the proper documents, and then she got sick with a lung disease. She was in the hospital for a month.
She finally met the right person through the college’s Changemaker program, which linked her to Casa Valentina, a program that helped her with housing and dealing with school bureaucracy.
Sales said the organization tries to give participants real-life experiences. She said Joseph loves to cook, but has never been able to take a cooking class.
Joseph now has three college classes — English, math and psychology — and works for Instacart. She recently applied for a job at Nordstrom. She is learning how to keep a budget and live independently.
She has dreams of going to Rice University in Texas — a dream that developed when she was a teenager staring at Turner Tech’s college wall. She developed a love for marine biology early on, and a degree in biotechnology would allow her to eventually work for or own a pharmaceutical company focused on curing ailments in marine life.
She often cooks for the other women in her house: spaghetti, fried fish, rice and peas — recipes she learned from her grandmother.
“I am learning to love myself each day,” she said, adding that she’s been taking better care of herself. “Two years ago I was sad, depressed, angry. I pushed good people away who wanted to help me.”
Now, she is looking forward to the day that she can appreciate her journey.
“I am going to look back one day and say, ‘I’ve come a long way.’ “
HOW TO HELP
Wish Book is trying to help hundreds of families in need this year. To donate, pay securely at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook. For information, call 305-376-2906 or email wishbook@miamiherald.com. (The most requested items are often laptops and tablets for school, furniture, and accessible vans.) Read more at MiamiHerald.com/wishbook.
