If the path to graduation is filled with adversity, then Brandie Bernstein literally wrote the book.
"I was 15 when I dropped out school and ran away," Bernstein said. "Was living on the streets. I would sleep in abandoned houses and restaurants and places like that with other street kids."
When she started taking drugs at the age of 13 and through her nightmarish experience living on the streets, Bernstein kept a journal which she now says represents the darkest chapters in her life. She was addicted using acid, cocaine, crack, heroin and ecstasy.
"I didn't feel like anyone understood me," Bernstein said. "I feel like I didn't belong anywhere."
Now, she belongs to Regis University where she is getting her Master's degree in criminology during graduation Saturday morning. Bernstein says she decided to change her life after seeing something on television.
"I believe it was a 9News special about drug addiction or the impacts that drugs have on families or something like that," Bernstein said. "I just remember crying all the way through the whole thing. I just sobbed."
Father John P. Fitzgibbons S.J. is president of Regis University. He says Bernstein is representative of the types of students who look for answers at his school.
"Every one of our students has a story," Fitzgibbons said.
He says the type of turnaround Bernstein experienced is not uncommon at Regis.
"Epiphany and revelation are the two hallmarks of this kind of education," Fitzgibbons said. "Human beings are a work in progress."
Fitzgibbons says Regis is about building the whole person regardless of his or her past.
"Whether you come from a fairly privleged background or from a less privileged background, a pretty hard scrabble background, this community really does understand how to nurture life," Fitzgibbons said.
Bernstein wants to use her criminology degree to work with children to keep them away from drugs and off the streets.
"I've proven now that I can be someone and that anyone can do that," Bernstein said. "Just because I started off, you know, using drugs and being homeless doesn't mean that I don't have a future."
It does mean she got a second chance.
"I don't generally feel I deserve that. So, it's really amazing that people think I do," Bernstein said.
