COSTA MESA : Mastering School and Life by Degrees

Rachel Winston doesn’t have much time to waste, or even to sleep.

Besides teaching at Orange Coast College two nights a week, Winston, 31, flies to Boston every Monday to attend a class in educational policy at Harvard University and returns Wednesday morning.

What’s more, she also takes a class at the University of Southern California extension campus in Orange County.

She has earned five undergraduate degrees and two graduate degrees and is pushing for a doctorate at Harvard and a master’s from USC.

But that’s not all.

Winston, who is spending about $30,000 on education this year, tutors a steady stream of students, on some days from 4:30 a.m. until midnight at the crowded Costa Mesa apartment she shares with her husband, Darrell, who also tutors students. She said that financially, they are “just scraping by.”

Weekends for her are not for relaxing, but for consulting with more of her 20 to 25 tutees.

Pushed all her life to make every minute count, Winston, a full-time tutor, passes on to her students what she has learned about setting goals, the need for organization and the value of persistence. She uses 20 hours out of every day either tutoring, studying, flying, driving to LAX, attending class, lecturing, preparing for her classes, grading papers or substitute teaching, along with more “normal” pursuits such as eating, cleaning her home and taking care of her husband.

“I use every minute,” she said. “Every minute I’m not doing something, I figure out something to do.”

What’s the upshot of such a crazy schedule?

Winston hopes she will someday occupy a position at the national level to influence the U.S. education system. She has set a personal deadline of 15 years in which to become an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education.

Why not go for the top post, secretary of education?

“That position seems to me to be more of a figurehead,” said Winston. “I want to be the person who thinks of policy and I want to be the person who feeds that information. I’m a writer. I’m issue-directed.”

She also has strong opinions on education that she admits will have to be “toned down,” or expressed more sensitively, when she presents them in the public forum. For example, she believes that some professors focus on their careers instead of making their students the top priority.

Also, she said many instructors who aren’t fluent in English are trying to teach students who speak English only.

“That’s one of my things, and it’s not a racial thing,” she said. “I grew up in a multinational environment. . . .”

As a child, Winston said, she learned early that her parents--who earned four doctorate degrees between them--would expect nothing but the best from her. She was learning math, physics, chemistry and biology while she was still a toddler and entered college at 13.

Along the way, she lost her hearing from the age of 5 until her sophomore year at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. She developed ulcers while completing a triple major at Syracuse University. But Winston said she gained first-hand knowledge about overcoming obstacles that continues to inspire her and her students.

“I tell my students that it’s possible to have have a full-time job and still go to school,” Winston explained. “I not only believe it, I’m proof that it’s possible,” she said. “That’s what gets the students excited, they see that it is possible.”