Photo by: Lynn Walton

Lynn and Daisha work together. They go to school together. They baby-sit each other’s sons. They might even move in together. They also happen to be mother and daughter. Lynn Walton, 50, and her daughter Daisha Walton, 26, are busy women. They are both mothers of young sons, have full-time jobs, and are working toward their degrees at The Women’s College. And, they’re doing it all at the same time, and all of it together. It is the togetherness that seems to make it all work. “We’re best friends,” said Daisha. “We share everything. We co-babysit. We help each other at school and at work. We’re like a co-op.” And, they both love going to school at TWC, where they integrate their rich lives outside of school with what they learn in the classroom. As the name suggests, TWC is a single gender college geared toward the nontraditional student and the working mother. The school is part of DU and is located in the Chambers Center, a new classroom and office building on the corner of East Asbury Avenue ad South High Street. “The school is very accommodating to working women. There is a lot of camaraderie over there. It’s really fabulous a great way to go to school,” said Lynn, a communications major and gender and women’s studies minor. Before enrolling at TWC, Daisha was a student at the University of Colorado at Denver, an experience she calls “night and day” to being a student at DU. “My classes here don’t feel like classes. They’re therapeutic,” she said. Although they were initially skeptical about the all female aspect of the school, Lynn and Daisha love their classes because they foster honesty and openness among women. “[The format] elicits a much more open discussion about women’s roles and patriarchy,” said Lynn. “We have discussions that you just wouldn’t have in a regular classroom.” They appreciate the dollar value of their education because of the unique way they both arrived at DU. “When you choose to go pursue a degree, and pay for it, while working full-time, you just don’t skip class,” they echoed each other in saying. “We have lived more than a traditional student,” said Lynn. “We’re always bouncing the things you learn in class off your job and your life and vise versa. I really use the stuff I learn in my class at my job.” In addition to enrolling in school together, Lynn and Daisha work full-time as administrative assistants at Janus Intech, in Cherry Creek. “It’s hard to balance school, motherhood and work,” said Daisha, a business major and communications minor. “But, I’m going to hit a glass ceiling. I can’t do anything without my degree.” Lynn and Daisha also have young sons, 10 and 6, respectively, who keep them busy when they aren’t at school or work. The realms of mother, student, employee take up most of their time, they say, but the synergy between each area makes it all the more rich. “It’s cool to bounce together the whole school and work life, and have them all be integrated,” said Lynn. But, “it is really hard,” said Daisha, a single mother. One of the factors that propel them forward in their education is the example that they are setting for their young sons. “We talk a lot about how it is so important for us to model the kinds of things we want our sons to be, for them to value education, like we do.”