Don’t tell Jean Park she’s got “drive.” It will just remind her of her stressful one-hour commute from law school to her Groton hometown to meet her kids at the bus stop and daycare center.

“It’s a lot of juggling,” she conceded during a rare moment of free time in the law school’s café. “The most difficult thing for me is getting the school schedules set for my children and me so we can coordinate all our schedules and still spend time together.”

She goes to bed early with her children, then wakes up at 4 a.m. to study her law lessons. When the kids wake up, it’s time to make breakfast, prepare lunches, get them dressed and off to school before she hits the highway for that hour-long drive to Quinnipiac. She’ll spend all day at law school before it’s time to set out for home again to pick the kids up.

It isn’t easy, she said, but it’s worth it.

“I’m doing it for me and for my kids, exercising my brain and moving forward,” she said. “It’s good for my kids to see me in school. My two-year-old will say, ‘Mommy reads books.’”

This semester, she’s had to add another schedule to her juggling act – her coursework includes a judicial externship.

“I care a lot about fairness and justice,” she said. “I look forward to being a role model for other women of color who want to be lawyers.”