A collection of features and graduate profiles covering Harvard’s 375th Commencement.
When Rosie Rines graduated from Boston’s Roslindale High School in 1964, college didn’t seem like an option. But later this month, at 79 years old, she’ll don a cap and gown and receive her undergraduate degree from Harvard Extension School — with her daughters cheering her on.
“At that time, you either got married and had children or you had a job,” Rines said. “But if you had a job, you still lived at home. I didn’t know I could just say, ‘I’m 18, I’m going to do what I want.’”
Rines is proof that it’s never too late to pursue an education. She married young, moving cross-country to California with her 3-year-old twin daughters. Throughout her 20s and early 30s as a single mother, Rines balanced making ends meet through court transcription work and secretarial jobs while carting her kids to school and field trips and practices and recitals.
She returned to the East Coast when the girls were 7 and a little more independent. It was then that Rines started the long road to becoming a college graduate. At 36, she started taking classes at the local Quincy College. But still juggling full-time work, she stopped at her associate degree.
