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Teen Mom Earns $1 Million In College Scholarships

High school is hard. Whenever people go on about high school being the best years of their life it makes me really sad for the rest of their existence. Between the social, parental, and academic pressures teenagers have to go through during high school it's no wonder so many kids struggle when it comes to the next stage: college. Now imagine trying to figure all of that out with a baby. You would have to be a special kind of tenacious just to consider college. Lamyrical Harris is next level tenacious. This teen mom earned $1 million in college scholarships while raising her baby boy and proved perseverance pays off every time.

Harris is a student at Trezevant High School in Memphis, Tennessee. As Assistant Principal Yolanda Sherrod told local news station WREG, the high school senior has always been a good student and earned excellent marks. Even after she discovered she was pregnant in her junior year, when she apparently found a new kind of motivation in being a mother: "She came to school. She took care of business, and her motivation has been her child." She definitely took care of business, it seems. Not only was Lamyrical Harris the valedictorian of her graduating class, she also managed to earn more than $1 million in college scholarships.

As reported by People, when Harris started to apply for college scholarships in her junior year of high school. By the end of that year she had amassed a whopping $100,000 worth of scholarships but it didn't end there. Harris continued to apply for more scholarships and by the time she graduated she was accepted to two dozen colleges with more than $1.2 million to help her along. Trezevant High School shared the happy news in a Facebook post:

We have our first MILLION DOLLAR SCHOLAR in Trezevant history. Our valedictorian, Lamyrical Harris, has been offered a total of $1,244,298 in ACADEMIC scholarships, making her our first to receive this honor. While we've had some amazing athletes throughout Trezevant history, she is the first to earn this amount solely in academic scholarships. The class of 2019 continues to break records and leave its mark on THS forever. Congratulations Lamyrical!

As excited as Harris most definitely is to be rewarded for her hard work, it's her son Ladderious Moore who remains her guiding light. When she was struggling to stay motivated, Harris told Inside Edition she had one teacher in particular who really supported her and helped her stay the course when she was pregnant. Plus the idea that she was going to be a mother "made me go 10 times harder."

As she decides which college she will attend in the fall, she's thinking about her son and the bright future she hopes to be able to provide him with, as she told the media outlet:

I want him to be valedictorian of his class, and I want him to have over a million dollars in scholarships.

Harris' story is an important reminder that motherhood is a powerful thing. Rather than giving up, this young mom used her own strength, motivation, and support system to create a better life for herself and her son.

Because this is what happens when a community builds a person up instead of tearing them down.