For most families, graduation day belongs to one person at a time. For Lissette Garcia and her son Jason, it belonged to both of them, on the same stage, on the same afternoon.
The two graduated together this spring from the University of Maryland Global Campus, closing out two separate journeys that happened to finish at exactly the same time. Lissette had started working toward her degree back in 2018, chipping away at coursework for years while raising her family. Jason began his own degree in 2023 — five years after his mother started hers — and the two ended up crossing the finish line together almost by coincidence.
“To walk the stage with my son, it’s just so great,” Lissette told CBS News Baltimore after the ceremony.
For Jason, finishing wasn’t just a personal milestone — it was a shared one. “I thought it was a massive relief and a massive accomplishment to finally cross that stage,” he said.
**Two timelines, one finish line**
What makes the story resonate isn’t just that a parent and child graduated in the same year — it’s that their paths ran on completely different clocks. Lissette’s six-year journey and Jason’s three-year one were shaped by different circumstances, different pressures, and almost certainly different late nights. That they converged on the same commencement date wasn’t planned; it just happened to work out that way.
For families juggling work, kids, and coursework at the same time — a situation plenty of adult students know well — the Garcias’ story is a reminder that a degree earned slowly is no less of an accomplishment than one earned quickly, and that sometimes the people cheering loudest for you are working toward the exact same goal, right alongside you.
*This article is based on reporting by CBS News Baltimore. Read the original report [here](https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/maryland-mother-son-graduate-together-umgc/).*
Photo by U.S. Army Europe, public domain (PDM 1.0).