By Theresa Servin
“Wow, Mom, everybody knows you.”
My daughter, Arabella “Bella” Servin, has said some version of this more than once since starting her freshman year at the University of the Incarnate Word.
Sometimes it comes after someone stops me while we are walking across campus. Other times, it follows another introduction to a professor, staff member, or student.
“Do you have to introduce me to everybody?”
I probably don’t.
But after spending the past two years building a life for myself at UIW, it is strange—and pretty wonderful—to suddenly have my daughter standing in the middle of it.
Most parents send their children off to college. I went with mine.
Bella and I arrived at UIW from very different starting lines. She is 18, beginning college at the point in life when most people expect that journey to begin. I returned to education nearly three decades after mine was interrupted. For this brief chapter in our lives, those two paths share the same campus.
Two Beginnings
My road to UIW began long before I became a Cardinal. Growing up in San Antonio, I dreamed of attending Incarnate Word, but my education did not go as I expected. Life moved forward. I married, raised two children, and spent decades focused on my family. Still, education remained unfinished business.
In 2023, I earned my GED through Restore Education. In Spring 2024, I enrolled at UIW, the university I had wanted to attend when I was young.
I am now pursuing UIW’s Accelerated Bachelor’s-to-Master’s pathway in Strategic and Corporate Communication. Along the way, UIW has become much more than the place where I attend class. Through student media, communication, and campus leadership, I have built a college life of my own.
Then Bella arrived.
She graduated from Harlan High School in 2026 and entered UIW with a Presidential Scholarship. An artist who loves drawing and working with her hands, she is majoring in Art Therapy.
The first time I saw her on campus as a student, I remember thinking,
“Wow, she’s really here.”
I was proud, but I was also struck by how different her beginning was from mine. She was starting at 18. I had spent years believing my chance had already passed.
Same Campus, Different College Lives
Although Bella and I attend the same university, we are not having the same college experience. That is exactly how it should be.
My days often stretch beyond classes into writing, editing, meetings, organizations, and campus events. Bella is still discovering what her college life will look like. Right now, she is going to class, completing assignments, learning the campus, meeting people, and figuring out where she belongs.
We do not share a major or a schedule. Some days we cross paths between classes. Sometimes I wait for her, and sometimes she waits for me. Eventually, we leave campus and go home, where we are simply mother and daughter again.
Bella said having me nearby has made the transition to college a little easier.
“Knowing my mom is a student at UIW at the same time I am makes me feel less nervous about being a newbie,” she said. “She’s shown me around campus numerous times and has introduced me to important people, which opens up new connections for me.”
Those introductions may occasionally earn me an eye roll, but I know there will come a time when Bella no longer needs me to make them. Professors will learn her name. Classmates will become friends. Her art will carry her perspective. She will build a UIW world that belongs to her.
Sharing a campus has also shown us that, despite being at very different points in our lives, we face some surprisingly similar problems in college.
“At the end of the day, we are all dealing with pretty similar stuff on campus,” Bella said. “My mom and I both stress about assignments and just want to find our place.”
For most of Bella’s life, I have simply been Mom. At UIW, she gets to see another part of me—the student with professors, classmates, deadlines, responsibilities, and goals of my own.
“Seeing her dedication and how she’s just diving into everything encourages me to do the same,” Bella said.
Of everything she has told me about sharing campus, that may mean the most.
A Lesson Passed Forward
My journey matters to me, but I do not want Bella to have to repeat it.
It took me nearly 30 years to prove myself wrong. For too long, I believed certain things were no longer possible because I had not accomplished them when I thought I was supposed to.
Returning to school taught me there is no single correct timeline for becoming who you want to be. But if there is one lesson from my journey, I hope Bella learns it earlier than I did: don’t wait.
I want her to take chances on herself, try new things even when she is scared, and understand that her life is hers to shape.
My dreams waited nearly 30 years for me. I hope Bella never waits that long for hers.
For This Little Window of Time
Our time together as UIW students will not last forever. I am nearing the end of my undergraduate work and moving toward my master’s degree. Bella is just beginning to create a university experience that will increasingly become her own.
Someday, I think I will remember the ordinary moments most: spotting her walking across campus, unexpectedly running into each other, waiting for a class to end, talking about assignments, and hearing, once again, “Mom, do you know everybody?”
She is beginning her story at UIW. I had to wait nearly 30 years to begin mine. For a little while, those two stories get to overlap.
Someday, I will be able to say something very few mothers get to say: my daughter and I went to college together.
For now, we each have our own classes, goals, and experiences at UIW. Every once in a while, our paths cross somewhere on campus, and I am reminded just how special this time really is.
For this little window of our lives, we get to be Cardinals together.
