VALDOSTA — Anais “A.J.” Hall-Garrison will walk the stage with her fellow Valdosta State University graduates May 8, but this isn’t her first walk across a graduation stage.

Hall-Garrison already has a master’s degree and will now be adding a nursing degree to the mix.

So, how did this 35-year-old single mother find herself in school again?

Well, when she graduated from Valdosta High School in 2004 and graduated from Albany State with a bachelor’s in biology, she’d planned to go into medicine.

However, after working with Verizon Wireless for five years that paid for her schooling, she found herself teaching science.

“Teaching was like a calling for me,” Hall-Garrison said.

She comes from a long line of teachers with her grandfather, Alphonso Hall, and mother Ingrid Hall both working in education. Notably, Ingrid Hall was the first principal of the Valdosta Early College Academy.

Initially a substitute, the school was short a teacher and she was offered a position to teach at William Raines High School in Jacksonville, Fla. She found a place in teaching alternative school students, finding the students to be bright and eager to learn.

And she began to think about her career differently.

“A lot of the issues I had wasn’t classroom or anything like that; it was health issues,” Hall-Garrison said. “I was going out into the community getting vouchers so that they could get glasses because, yeah, you’re not going to do well on the test if you can’t see it.”

She was able to get students linked with local clinics that provide either free or discounted health care, which is when the lightbulb “clicked” for her.

“I was like I could still teach but I could do it to help my community and do it more in a preventative way,” Hall-Garrison said. “So one-on-one with a patient and help my community in that way.”

She segued from teaching to nursing and returned home to Valdosta to begin at Valdosta State University.

Juggling not only the usual stressors of an involved program such as nursing, she also balanced raising her son who is named Alphonso after her grandfather.

Now, the mother and son will be graduating together: Alphonso from kindergarten and her from VSU.

“It’s full circle to be able to take all of my past experience and to be able to pour it into my career,” Garrison-Hall said.

But as they say, “it takes a village.”

Hall-Garrison felt she had, and continues to have, a strong support group through her family and Valdosta State University staff.

She also found a true camaraderie among her fellow nursing students. At 35, she was one of the older students. With age, comes an ability to not be shy when asking questions, Hall-Garrison said, and she asked a lot of questions her peers may have been too afraid to ask.

She also found that her bubbly spirit bounced off her peers and made her a well-known fixture within the program.

As she now prepares to walk that VSU stage alongside them, her future will begin.

Already with several job offers on the table, Hall-Garrison said she hopes to stay in the Valdosta area and give back to the community that has given so much to her.