Though Lourdes Flores was born in the United States, her parents had immigrated from Mexico.
“In kindergarten, I was thrown in without a single word of English,” said Flores, who completed a bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences in summer 2025. “My mom wanted us to learn the native language, so I had to repeat kindergarten.”
That “lost” year weighed on Flores as she grew up in Roxboro, North Carolina In eighth grade, when she met with an advisor to map out her high school career, she asked if it would be possible to complete high school in three years.
“The advisor said, ‘no, not really,’ that it was very unrealistic,” Flores said. “I said I would like to give it a shot.”
She took as many classes as she could every semester and was one of the rare people who benefited from being forced to take online classes during the COVID-19 outbreak.
“The times were more flexible,” she said. “I was able to take classes remotely I would not regularly be able to do.”
Many of those classes were dual credit, earning her credits at both Person High School and Piedmont Community College. As a result, she entered North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in August 2023 as a sophomore.
She chose NCCU partially for a joint bachelor’s and master’s program and partially for other reasons.
“NCCU was small and felt more like a community college rather than really big,” Flores said. “Everyone was willing to help you.”
She had to figure out the best way to study and get used to 16-week classes – double the length of her eight-week high school courses. She did well enough to become an honors student and earn a partial scholarship.
Along the way, she completed an internship at Duke University in evolutionary anthropology and also worked as a nursing assistant at Duke Regional Hospital.
“She’s very determined and ambitious,” said Shynese Hockaday, a graduation specialist at NCCU. “She was never really intimidated by the work or complained about how hard the classes are.”
Now age 20, Flores has been admitted to an MBA program at NCCU and is studying for the Dental Admissions Test with the aim of attending dental school after her MBA, perhaps at Rutgers School of Dental Medicine.