Just Another Grad, Except for the 5 Kids

STANFORD —  At first glance, and maybe even the second, Angela Horine looked like a typical Stanford student.

She wore the obligatory jeans with a hole in one knee, patched tennies and a warm pullover sweater that had seen better days. Like most female students, she preferred her straight blonde hair shoulder length.

Even her exuberance seemed typical.

But really there was nothing typical about Angela. In fact, she is about as atypical a student as you might find in any college.

“I did it, I’m going to graduate,” she shouted, “and I’ve got five kids.”

Another Graduate

Angela’s oldest daughter already has graduated from Lewis and Clark College, beating mom, who is 42, by a few months. Another daughter is an undergraduate teaching assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Three other girls, aged 16, 14 and 9, remain at home in Los Altos along with dad, David Horine, who holds three degrees and has lectured from time to time at Stanford.

Angela and David went to the same junior and senior high schools in the Glendale area of Southern California. David started his collegiate career at Stanford while Angela spent her first two years at the University of Redlands and then transferred to Stanford. After completing one quarter, she became pregnant and dropped out.

Delighted Mother

“I was delighted,” Angela says, recalling that motherhood always ranked high in her plans. “I was an only child and I wanted 10 of my own. David wanted one or two, so we compromised on five.”

While Angela busied herself raising the children, she promised herself that one day she would return to Stanford. That day came after her second daughter left home for college and the empty-nest syndrome started to settle in.

That’s when she made the decision to return to Stanford, but, as might be expected, there was some apprehension and a lot of doubt.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” David told her.

“I felt I had some skills left,” Angela recalls, “but I wasn’t sure I could compete with the kids.”

Full-Time Student

So, she took one small step forward, enrolling in a four-unit sociology course during the summer of 1982. Encouraged at how well she did and feeling Stanford really wanted her, Angela became a full-time student that fall and after this past winter quarter she had completed the required 183 units for a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

Now, she has decided to go on to a master’s program, and already has a job lined up as a teaching assistant in the Sociology Department at Stanford.

Angela hopes other mothers who had to drop out of college for one reason or another might take courage from her experience and return to complete their education.

“Women like me should know that what I’ve done isn’t easy,” she says, “but it’s really worth it.”

One of her professors at Stanford has this observation about Angela:

“One of the delightful aspects of this very warm and expressive woman,” says Prof. Joseph Berger, “is that she is so young-looking that most students didn’t know she has five children. But at the end of every course, she would bring in cookies--her way of saying ‘This is mother, kids.’ ”