A family affair: Mother and son graduate side by side at Fenway Park
“One of the reasons I decided to go was because of how much Joshua would talk about loving Northeastern,” Odette Ramgeet told Northeastern Global News.
Like so many Huskies who’ve come before him, Joshua Ramgeet got the most out of his Northeastern University experience.
A gregarious, business-minded creative with a love of hip-hop, jazz and Grammy-winning rapper Tyler, the Creator, the then 19-year-old marketing student hit the ground running his freshman year in the fall of 2021. His list of extracurriculars piled up quickly and now includes the real estate, entrepreneurship, songwriting and comedy clubs.
Ramgeet, who graduated Wednesday at Fenway Park, was having such a fruitful time on the Boston campus that others around him took note of it. One of those people was his mother, Odette Ramgeet, who, as her son entered his sophomore year, was beginning to consider how she might spend the first few years of retirement.
At 46, and with several college credits from her 25 years in the U.S. Air Force, Odette decided that obtaining her bachelor’s degree was a logical next step — a way to continue her education and put her Post-9/11 GI Bill funding, through the Yellow Ribbon Program, to good use.
But nobody in the Ramgeet family predicted what would follow. A brief conversation with an adviser at Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies spurred Odette to enroll at Northeastern to study project management.
“One of the reasons I decided to go was because of how much Joshua would talk about loving Northeastern,” Odette told Northeastern Global News.
The two collected their diplomas together on Wednesday among 5,000 other students attending a rapturous undergraduate commencement ceremony at Fenway Park.
“It’s a great accomplishment for the both of us,” said Odette who, alongside her son, is a first-generation college student.
Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Odette Ramgeet moved to the U.S. when she was 14. After high school, she’d decided to join the Air Force almost on a whim, filling out a military recruiter’s card she’d found in the mail one day in February 2000.
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Two months later, she shipped out for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, and later completed dental assistant training in Wichita Falls, Texas. She was stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, where she worked as a dental assistant for nearly a decade and where she would also give birth to Joshua.
She went on to oversee logistics for a support unit, managing a budget of up to $1 million and helping to process new airmen, which meant conducting exams, X-rays and screening for potential medical issues. Toward the end of her service, she completed an unaccompanied tour, without family members, in Turkey before returning to the United States.
A lifelong cook with a passion for “all of the world’s cuisines,” she’d briefly considered culinary school after retiring in May of 2020. (Her favorite dish to cook for the family, she said, is braised oxtail, served with a side of rice, peas and fried plantains.) Ultimately, she decided it would be too taxing, citing the fact that she developed carpal tunnel syndrome from her time in the military.
It just so happened that, around this time, a good friend of hers was also planning to go back to school and was in the process of meeting with representatives at Northeastern to explore opportunities. She extended Odette an invitation to join in on those chats.
“I thought it was a perfect fit,” Odette said, who officially began as a Northeastern student in the spring of 2023. “Then when I started going, [Joshua] would tell his friends, ‘Oh, my mom goes here too,’ and they wouldn’t believe him.”
How did Joshua feel about the decision his mother made to return to college?
“I think it’s really cool,” he said. “After 20 years in a career, it’s hard to switch directions.”
Odette began at Northeastern as Joshua was going into his junior year, so the odds that the two would graduate together seemed unlikely. But after her credits transferred and Joshua stretched his degree into a fifth year, the stars aligned.
“I didn’t realize this was going to happen until like a month ago,” Joshua said.
While Odette charted a path for herself that she hopes will one day lead to opportunities in construction, Joshua was exploring his creative side at Northeastern, trying his hand at stand-up comedy, developing and pitching business concepts and building connections across the campus. He’d even don a practice jersey on occasion to help the women’s basketball team prep for big games.
His two co-ops — one at a major U.S. health insurance company and another at a small medical device firm — gave him exposure to sales and marketing. And though he hasn’t quite decided on his next move, he said he hopes to combine his love of music and marketing, potentially producing music videos — an art form that he said “has kind of fallen off.”
“I just love the whole aspect of building or creating something, whether a song or an album, and showing it to people,” he said.
Before receiving their degrees on commencement day, the two said it was surreal to be graduating together, “as it wasn’t planned.” They planned to take lots of photos.
“We’re honestly still taking it all in,” Joshua said. “It’s such a full-circle moment for us, and we’re just incredibly proud of each other and grateful for the journey.”
