Joining the back to school gang
I’m taking on something new just like Miss Cicely Clark did in 1942, joining The Women’s Timber Corpsas part of the war effort. (Photo by Horace Abrahams/Keystone Features/Getty Images)
One of the perks of working at NCPR is our access to free courses at St. Lawrence University, also available to spouses. My late husband, Bill Knoble, earned a BS in Geology (Summa Cum Laude!) which he started at the age of 60. I’ve audited a couple of classes and taken one for credit.
This week, it’s back to school for area colleges, and after Labor Day, public schools return. I’ve joined the school crew. I signed up for an advanced fiction writing class with Professor Paul Graham. I’m thrilled, and a little scared.
I live with a “foster” son who is in his senior year at SUNY Canton, just two semesters away from a degree in Electrical Engineering. He takes 19-21 credits each semester and pulls down straight As. In my family, top of the class seems to be the norm.
But here’s the thing. At this age (my age, over 60), who cares, really? I no longer worry about what “people think.” My mother-in-law passed away and took to her grave the metaphorical white gloves swiping windowsills; I traded in fashionable for functional clothing years ago; and, I’ll pretty much let you know if I don’t like the music.
The joy of going back to school late in life is that grades and status just don’t matter any more. It’s about curiosity and challenging yourself. I wish I could say the same about my undergraduate years four decades ago (that was more about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll). Now, I want to stretch. I write a lot of prose for my job, but writing fiction is a whole different world. I’ve dabbled. Now I want to challenge myself to do it for real. Maybe get a few chapters for that novel started.
Wish me luck…the younger students in this class are the cream of the writing crop at SLU. I hope I can keep up.
Oh, and help me out by telling me about your late in life learning experiences–formal classes, seminars, shadowing a artisan you learned a craft from, whatever. Thanks.
Tags: alternative students, college, school, writing
As a fellow NCPR employee / SLU student, it is nice to return to school as an older, wiser version of myself. I unlike you Ellen am of course doing it to complete my degree and not purely for pleasure, but it is much more enjoyable than it was when I was 18.
I went back to school (quite a number of years ago) to work on my MFA – I had been out of school for a dozen years. Ok, that doesn’t sound like I was all that old but I was an older student when I went back to get my BFA, graduating in my early 30s. So I was in my mid 40s when I started down the path of an MFA…which I never completed – life got too busy for me to be able to spend the time needed to complete the course work. But I don’t regret one moment of that time back at school, working at that intellectual level that really challenged me, even though it didn’t result in a completed degree. I just didn’t care about those kind of details – I was learning and being challenged and that’s all that counted.