Graduations are usually celebrations. But for Stefanie Johnson, a 33-year-old single mother, her looming commencement next August from St. Francis College in Brooklyn will be a bittersweet “crossroads.”

On one hand, it will mark a milestone. After becoming pregnant with her 12-year-old daughter Taylor Williams during her sophomore year, Johnson gave up her pursuit of an undergraduate degree in English at Tufts University for a full-time job, salary and benefits as a coordinator for a foreign investment bank in 1996. Stefanie bore most of the responsibility of raising her child; Taylor's father rarely helped out.

But, due to a round of layoffs at her company in January, she got an unexpected second chance to finish her first degree, a B.A. in Economics from St. Francis. And, despite working for her firm for more than a decade, Johnson said she felt unusually calm about her pink slip.

“At that time I had a lot of personal things going on as well,” Johnson said. “My niece passed away on the 13th of January and I went back into work two days later and got laid off. But, honestly, I had a very positive attitude about it because as a Christian, I just know that God is going to take care of me.”

Johnson felt that although one door was closing, a window was opening.

“I kind of felt like I had been trapped in a job that I didn’t necessarily want to be doing,” Johnson said. “But it was necessary for me to provide for myself and my child. We had great benefits and it was stable. So, you get comfortable. You get that stability.”

She tries to shield her daughter, Taylor, from any additional stress due to the recession but Taylor can't help but notice her mother's heavier load.

"It's been a little bit more difficult recently," Taylor said, " Like we wanted to go skating but we couldn't because Mommy didn't have enough money to take us and also because she had so much work to do. So, she's trying to find out how to balance school, and me, and work, and everything. So, it's a lot."

Still, Taylor says her mom's resilience has inspired her during the recession.

"She's definitely taught me to keep God first because we have that foundation," she said. "She has also inspired me to become more hard working because she's always so tired because she does so much."

Now with the reality of unemployment, Johnson hopes to beat the recession by investing in her education, like millions of other Americans with limited job opportunities. Enrollment numbers at undergraduate and graduate institutions have increased ten percent since the recession started in 2007, according to data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do next,” Johnson said. “But I don’t want to reenter the workforce not having my degree and being in the same position.”

But graduation also marks the end of her student loans that have supplemented her stretched budget. Her unemployment checks, which she filed for in May, will also dry up this December. So, despite working two part-time jobs, Johnson isn’t sure if her new degree will help make ends meet. She works as an assistant for a local playwright but her pay is sporadic. She is also working as production assistant for an independent film but she works for free.

With the additional funds from her part-time work and unemployment benefits, she gets by on about $1500 a month and $10,000 in student loans help her pay for tuition. But with a daughter applying to private and charter high schools and the cost of a two-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, plus other expenses, Stefanie says she still has to cut corners.

Yet, she is happy to have the chance to explore several different creative fields; an opportunity she says that wouldn't have happened without unemployment.

"I needed an opportunity to be able to go off on my own and pursue what I want to do," she said. "Had I done that earlier, I would have been in a bad position. Having been laid off, I had a nice package and I could just kind of relax for a little while and focus on what I needed to focus on for me."