Family boosts Monica Schirmer

CEDAR RAPIDS - Monica Schirmer took her four sons - ages 19, 17, 8 and 5 - out for dinner Tuesday night to say thanks for all their support along the way as she worked on a nursing degree at Kirkwood Community College in recent years.

“With the older boys, many times they had to take the little ones to school or take them to the park to play so I could study,” Schirmer, 39, said. “I told them it's ‘we did this, not I did this.'”

Schirmer, of Robins, graduated from Kirkwood with an associate degree in nursing Saturday, after years of perseverance. She took Kirkwood classes online and on nights and weekends while she worked - sometimes full time and sometimes part time - and raised four sons.

“You just have to be very organized,” she said.

After graduating from Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School in 1990, Schirmer married one month shy of her 19th birthday because she decided marriage and family was the path for her. She worked at MCI telecommunications and gave birth to her first son at age 20.

“Because I'm very family-oriented, I didn't feel there was anything wrong with that,” she said.

But her message to her boys has always been that education is very important for them. So several years ago, Schirmer decided she wanted to earn her degree.

“I've always told my older boys college is not optional. You will go to college,” she said. “So I need to be an example.”

She started at Kirkwood in 2000 and went two semesters, but decided at that time to focus on her family and didn't continue classes. She returned to Kirkwood in 2006, determined to finish.

Her 17-year-old son is autistic and her youngest son also has special needs, but the boys were all very supportive of her studies, as was her significant other, Todd Saville, Schirmer said.

“The big thing for me was I needed to know it was OK to take time from my family to pursue this,” she said.

She was drawn to nursing because of her “caretaker” personality. It's a privilege to hold the hand of a patient and be there for them at the beginning of life and at the end, Schirmer said. She is currently a licensed practical nurse at Meth-Wick Community in Cedar Rapids and is seeking a nursing job at a Cedar Rapids hospital.

“You get to be a part of some of the most monumental parts of people's lives,” she said.