'I Have Wings Now': At Age 45, She Went Back To School

Ngoc Nguyen was born in Saigon during the final years of the Vietnam War. She left school when she was in 10th grade to help support her family.

In her early 20s, she immigrated to the U.S. and continued to work.

It wasn't until age 45 that Nguyen pursued a dream she had long put on hold: She enrolled in a GED program and passed the test to earn her certification.

In 2018, she sat down to record a StoryCorps conversation from Oklahoma City with her teacher, Chris Myers, to talk about what his class meant to her.

Nguyen, now 49, told Myers, 41, that she dropped out of high school, before she could earn her diploma.

"After the war my dad was in prison," she said. "My mom had to take care of five of us and I had to go out to work when I was like in sixth or seventh grade." She continued to work and go to school before dropping out.

Myers never knew that about his student.