Ever try to do something when you are in pain? Usually, your pain takes over as a natural reaction and your brain focuses on how you can treat the pain. But one Georgia woman was determined to take a college psychology test, despite the fact that she was in some of the worst pain known to a woman: labor.
On Thursday, November 12, 2015, then 21-year-old Tommitrise Collins was preparing to deliver her baby at Coliseum Medical Center, but before that happened she had to take an online test.
The thing about it is, Collins was told that she could only take the test that day. But of course nobody told her little bundle of joy when to come out.
“If I’m not in too much pain, I’ll take it,” Collins told her sister, Atlanta resident Shanell Chapman. Collins said her plan was to handle as much pain as long as possible and when she took the test she was not on any medication.
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“It took me 4-5 hours after the opening of the test to try to put the pain to the side and do it so I wouldn’t have to do it later and I could enjoy my newborn,” Collins said.
Collins, who is a Criminal Justice major, wasn’t about to ask her instructor at Middle Georgia State University to take the test later.
Collins was never one to take the easy way out. She was a basketball standout at Westside High School. She earned a scholarship to play at the University of Texas at El Paso and later transferred to play for two smaller schools in Oklahoma. As a a 6-foot-2 power forward. She’d torn ligaments in both her knees. She knew agony.
After all, it was her career-ending injury to her right knee that led her to move back home with her parents and enroll at Middle Georgia State University.
While doing so, her sister snapped a picture that has since gone viral.
“This is what you call ‘Strong Priorities’. Contractions 3 minutes apart and still takes her Psychology Test! You are going to be a great mom baby sis!” Chapman said on Facebook.
Chapman was supposed to travel to the Bahamas last week to celebrate her anniversary, but delayed the trip to be there with her sister.
Collins said even her nurse was shocked about her taking the test, but she was determined to finish… and good news, she passed! However, she wasn’t satisfied with her first score so she requested to take the test over and ended up with a “B” on the exam.
After roughly 20 hours of labor, Collins delivered a healthy baby girl at 9:19 p.m. Tyler Elise weighed 7 pounds and 10 ounces. Collins said she has been loving every moment of being a mother and feels like it’s the biggest blessing she has ever had.
She thinks the photo especially struck a chord with young women who quit school because they were pregnant.
“There are so many people who have reached out to me and said, ‘I got pregnant when I was young, too, and I just felt like I couldn’t do school anymore,’ and they just gave up,” Collins says. “I feel like I’m their motivation to start again.”
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