BEMIDJI-Cam Eberline wants to be a champion for children.
After she graduates from Voyageurs Expeditionary حلحلآ» on Friday, the 17-year-old is set to head to the University of Minnesota-Duluth to study for a social work degree. Then, she thinks, move to Chicago to earn a master's and become a guardian ad litem-a court-appointed advocate for children caught up in cases of abuse, neglect, and other legal proceedings.
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Eberline, who's moved around Minnesota most of her life, said a guardian ad litem represented her pro bono during a custody dispute between her mother and father. The guardian made a tough-but-necessary tactical decision to ask a judge for a 50/50 custody split, which Eberline, a child then, said she disagreed with at the time but has since come to see as the right call.
"Looking back, I can see why she made that decision," Eberline told the Pioneer. "And I thought it was really smart, and I want to be that. I want to be that, even if it's not going to make the kid happy at the time. I want them to be able to look back and be like, 'Wow, that was actually the right decision.'"
Eberline said she wants to pay that advocacy forward in her future career in the same profession.
She's set to graduate with a 3.3 GPA or thereabouts, and said she had to fight her way to that mark after falling behind a few years ago. She had a 3.8 GPA and was enrolled in advanced classes her sophomore year, and lost those marks amid a weighty depressive episode.
"I just really didn't care," she said. "Changing your GPA is really hard to do...Finishing all your online classes when you're six weeks away from the end of the semester is really hard to do when you haven't done a single bit of the work all semester. I would not recommend it."
Eberline said she got back on track by the beginning of her senior year at Voyageurs. She's set to be one of 11 students graduating from the Bemidji-area charter school on Friday evening.
