Two days before her 27th birthday, Arielle Boucher thought she was going to die. A young wife and mother of twins pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in Social and Criminal Justice at the University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC), Arielle suddenly found herself with difficulty breathing and was rushed to a hospital near her home in Gorham, Maine.
“The doctors found that I had upper respiratory failure, I was pale, and the corner of my lips were blue,” she recalls. “They even looked at the color of my toenails, and based on that and my tests, they determined I also had liver failure. They tested me for everything but did not figure out what was wrong.”
As she was admitted to the hospital in November 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Arielle was cut off from her family. Doctors wouldn’t allow her husband or twins to be in the room with her or spend the night, and she was isolated on a floor with COVID-19 patients – though she wasn’t infected with the virus.
Alone and afraid she wasn’t ever going to go home, Arielle prayed for a positive outcome and desperately tried to take her mind off things, but it was difficult not to imagine the worst.
“The doctors wanted to sit and talk with me because they were unsure if I was going to make it through the night,” she recalls. “I was very scared and didn’t have anyone around to talk to, so I decided to focus on school.”
Arielle phoned her husband and asked if he would bring her laptop to the hospital. She had two assignments due soon and didn’t want to fall behind, adding that she would feel guilty about asking for an extension, despite her grave condition.
“As I lay in the hospital bed, frightened about what might happen to me, I continued with my coursework so that it would be turned in on-time,” she says. “I didn’t worry about what was going on with me, and I allowed the doctors to do their work. I used my coursework as a distraction and still got an excellent grade. That is one of my darkest, but also proudest, moments as a UAGC student.”
A Commitment to Succeed
Seeing the doctors and nurses work around her — trying to help her in all the ways they could — was a different experience for Arielle. Typically, the roles are reversed, and she often is the first one to offer a helping hand.
Arielle’s compassion is what drove her back to school in the first place. She says she spent her post-high school years working in jobs that didn’t fulfill her, and, like many adult learners, she knew a college degree would open new doors and allow her to pursue a career she really wanted.
“As I lay in the hospital bed, frightened about what might happen to me, I continued with my coursework so that it would be turned in on-time,” she says. “I didn’t worry about what was going on with me, and I allowed the doctors to do their work. I used my coursework as a distraction and still got an excellent grade. That is one of my darkest, but also proudest, moments as a UAGC student.”
Choosing a degree in social and criminal justice, she explains, would get her closer to her goal.
“I just like the idea of helping people feel safe,” Arielle says. “I had ended up a few times in my past in domestic violence situations, and I wanted to help out anybody that was in the same shoes and dealing with violence or abuse.”
In the ten years between high school and college, Arielle moved around the country several times – from Massachusetts to Florida – before meeting her husband and settling down in Maine. Though she was finally happy, the experiences she had endured, coupled with difficulties in high school, severely damaged her confidence, made it difficult for her to have face-to-face conversations and made her believe she wasn’t smart enough to go to college.
Eventually, her husband helped persuade her to enroll, and after starting at UAGC, she says she “quickly learned it’s never too late.”
Though she hadn’t tried online learning before, Arielle found she had a knack for the UAGC virtual classroom. Suddenly, her confidence was building, and she was enjoying the online interactions she was having with her instructors and classmates. It wasn’t long before she began to experience real success.
“I was always worried that things were going to be too hard for me, but when I started, I was really surprised because I was getting high grades that I hadn’t seen before.”
Not only that, but Arielle was also finding it easier to talk to people in person. When she enrolled at UAGC, Arielle was a stay-at-home mom, working in direct sales but having little contact with non-family during the day.
Now, she says she’s thinking about what she’ll do after she graduates in 2025.
“I would really like to become a private investigator,” she says. “I want to provide safety for celebrities that come to Maine. It’s a small area in the corner of the country, not a lot of crowds here, it’s very private, so we get a lot of celebrities because it’s a great vacation spot.”
With her mind focused on her future, Arielle knew, even as she laid in the hospital bed, that whatever was ailing her would not distract her from her commitment to finishing school.
Turning A Corner
Getting her laptop in the hospital turned out to be Arielle’s saving grace in more ways than one. Not only did it remove the fear from her mind about what would happen next, it reminded her how much getting a degree would mean. Suddenly, instead of worrying about her health, she was thinking about the career she wanted and deserved – the career she would be one step closer to once she finished the assignments in front of her.
What happened next, Arielle can only describe as miraculous.
“After I finished my homework, I laid there in the bed, and the nurse came in,” Arielle says. “She was shocked. My skin was looking better, and within two hours, my oxygen was normal again.”
The doctors, she adds, never did determine exactly what caused her to fall ill, though Arielle believes a weakened immune system may have played a role.
When she looks back now, rather than dwell on the trauma of her experience, Arielle is proudest that she was able to lean on her dream of graduating from college to get her through her near-death experience.
“I got a very good grade on those assignments,” she says. “I was very excited about the fact that I did so great when I was sick.”
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Certain degree programs may not be available in all states.
Successful completion of the Bachelor of Arts in Social and Criminal Justice degree by itself does not lead to licensure or certification in any state, regardless of concentration or specialization.