College At 35

Being a 35 year old college student has some interesting advantages. The obvious benefits relate to seriousness, dedication, efficient time management, and overall focus. One underlying angle that only just occurred to me connects to personal empowerment. When I was 18 or 20 I had no idea that anything and everything was possible. 15 years of life experience can have some very dramatic effects upon the bearer, and the most valuable relates to this growing grasp on the sheer possibilities in life. I am not a victim of circumstance, but the purveyor of my own destiny.

My university, a state school with pockets of both ineptitude and brilliance also ranks very high in terms of value. For $10,000/year I have access to a fairly broad selection of classes, decent library resources online (great for the aspiring researcher or obsessive scanner), subsidized health insurance, some really bright educators (I do stress SOME), and classrooms filled with sleepy young people 15 years my junior. This last point, the typical college student body, presents the very best opportunity for the “non-traditional” student. A huge advantage exists when 85% of your classmates only show up half the time. First, the class size immediately shrinks providing more relative time per student during the allotted period. Want to leverage this? Sit up front and never miss a class. I treat this mid-life education exactly like I treated all my jobs, with total ownership and responsibility. When I show up for every single class and I am literally face to face with the professor it makes a serious impression. These overworked and sometimes underwhelmed teachers come to expect apathy from their students, yet when cogent adults present bright attentive behavior and salient questions consistently they tend to remember this at the end of the semester when calculating grades. This continues to be my top tactic in earning the dean’s list every semester without sacrificing in the many other aspects of life (kids, wife, house, job, staying out of trouble, hobbies, sleep).

The obvious point often missed by my younger peers is that I actually absorb more by being there all the time, cutting down and even eliminating the need to spend time on course material outside of class. This applies most particularly to the general education requirements of freshmen and sophomore level courses. Last semester I took a 100 level American History class at 8am. I drop my children off at school at 8am every weekday anyway, and their school allows for half hour early drop off for folks needing to get to work. How difficult was it to get my kids up a 30 minutes early vs. the payoff of being one of the only students to consistently show up for an 8 o’clock class? Easy beans, considering my past careers have demanded far earlier attendance than this, it still strikes me a practically sleeping in to get to the earliest classes offered. I love to hear them whine about how early that is when the day is actually half over with.

Since beginning a blog in earnest, my interest in improving my web design skills grows. While my university does have a well respected school of engineering complete with computer science curriculum, there lacks a really good web design class for those of us not within that track. For English Majors such as myself, the closest thing to what I was interested was “Web and Presentation Writing”, a perfectly tuned class for the skill I’m after. Except the class filled up with upperclassmen long before I could get a crack at it. I want these skills now because I want to build an awesome blog now, not 2 months before I graduate and wander back out into the cruel world. If I can build my readership before getting out of school, I might stand a chance at some income generation before we become a starving family. Okay, so we likely won’t starve, but you get my point.

So how to get into the fall class that filled up before summer break? Easy. I’m going to show up, attend the class anyway and utilize my growing rhetorical chops to convince the professor why I ought to be in his class. He has the ultimate say, and we both know at least a few of the currently registered students will never show up. Okay, see you in ENL 368.