By Elizabeth Jeffries | STC Student Member
Have you ever thought about going back to college? I was 36 when I decided to go back to school to get my bachelor’s degree. I had gone to college after graduating high school but got completely lost. Academically I was ready. Mentally? I crashed and burned.
Four colleges and five school years later, I only had an associate degree in general studies. I was in my 30s, bouncing from minimum wage job to minimum wage job. I was tired. Tired of having to start over every time I switched jobs, struggling for raises and to earn a decent salary. Tired of being skilled enough for my chosen career but stymied by the lack of a degree. Tired of having this huge regret in my life.
My boyfriend encouraged me to go back to get my bachelor’s degree to change all of that.
Making the decision to go back wasn’t hard. Choosing what I wanted to do wasn’t hard. I decided to go into technical writing, combining my love of writing, creativity, and the fact that I had been writing manuals at every job I had ever had because a poorly written manual drove me nuts. It wasn’t even hard figuring out where I would go to college: Metropolitan State University (MSU) of Denver, which was close to our house and had a degree program in technical communication.
What was hard was everything after that.
Brain Switch
One of the biggest culture shocks of my return to college was dealing with my age versus the age of the other students. Even though MSU Denver supports a large nontraditional student population, in many of my classes I was one of the oldest or close-to-oldest student.
I quickly realized that, while I felt mature and independent, I had never felt like an “adult.” Now, surrounded by younger students, I found my brain constantly switching between feeling like 18-year-old me, going to college for the first time, and someone who had lived 36 years on this earth. I found myself switching back and forth between the confident, self-assured person I had grown to be and the awkward, self-conscious teenager I had been. It made me question who I was as an adult and how I felt about that fact. I struggled with feeling that I had wasted the last 20 years of my life versus feeling proud that I was pursuing this huge goal. I struggled with acting my age while feeling like I’d somehow gone back in time.
Another brain switch was being taught by people barely older than I was (or even younger). It was (and still is) hard not to measure myself against them or to judge my life against their accomplishments.
I had to remember that my journey was my journey, not anyone else’s. I had to be proud of myself and what I was accomplishing. I had goals, and I was going to make them happen. The struggles are still there, but they are diminishing. I’ve made a lot of friends and figured out more of who I am. Age isn’t as big a deal as I thought it was when I first went back to school.
Academic Life
Switching to academic life was easier than the social part. I have always loved reading, writing, and studying.
What surprised me was the difference from what I had experienced in college before. Unlike my earlier experience, most of my professors worked either full or part time in a technical profession other than teaching. Classes taught up-to-date subjects and skills, like working with industry-standard software and producing portfolio pieces that mimicked projects I would create in my career. They also offered classes in skills that I had always wanted to acquire, like scriptwriting, video production, web design, and so many others. This switch from outdated classes taught by people who had never worked in the field to a far more practical approach shifted my school experience from one of dread to one of excitement.
Academic Upheaval
After my first year at MSU Denver, the Technical Communication Department completely switched its name and degree curriculum (it’s now called Journalism and Media Production). While I could still graduate under the old degree program, a whole new hurricane of headaches was headed my way:
- New prefixes for old classes
- Technology glitches that meant the old program didn’t understand the new coding system
- Old classes that weren’t being offered anymore
- Classes that were absorbed into other classes
- New classes that I wanted to take that weren’t included in my older degree catalog
During this upheaval, a lot of classes were being taught by new teachers or were being reworked as I was taking the class. Syllabi meant nothing, which was frustrating for me, as I liked being able to plan the semester. Yet I rose to the challenges of changing schedules, communicating with professors, and spontaneous assignments and projects.
All this means a lot of haunting my advisor’s office, double-checking that I’m taking the right classes and that I will graduate on time, and working with the administration to get class substitutions approved. But even though it’s aggravating, it’s satisfying because I know exactly what I’m taking, and I’m taking the classes I want to take. This is my degree, all the way.
Honors
I debated a lot about going into the Honors program. There were reasons not to—I didn’t need to do it for my degree, it would take more time to get out of school, and I would spend more tuition money—but in the end, I made the decision to join for two reasons: The Honors house was a quiet place to study, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.
I have never regretted going into Honors. It has pushed me to question labels and boundaries, both personally and professionally. It has challenged me academically. It has taught me that I am not just a writer or a person behind a screen. I have a voice.
Next spring, I hope to stand up in front of a crowd of people and present my senior thesis on how technical writing reflects our culture and what future societies will think of our culture from our current technical documents. This thought paralyzes me, as I suffer from extreme stage fright, but I am pushing myself to do it. I want to stand there for all the people who think they are too old to go back to school or follow their dreams. I want to stand there for all the technical writers who feel like they don’t have a place in academia or the sciences. Mostly, I want to stand there for myself because if I can push myself to do that, nothing else can stop me.
The End?
For anyone thinking about going back to school, here are four lessons I’ve learned on my journey:
- You will get over the culture shock. Don’t worry about what other people think because you are doing this for your own reasons.
- Don’t just check out the college. Check out who the professors are and what they are teaching. Look for professors who are actively working in the field and for classes that teach practical skills.
- Get to be friends with your advisor, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. This is your degree and you deserve to get the most out of your time.
- Tell the doubts to shut up. You can do this.
Going back to school has given me a chance to jump-start my career—from MSU Denver giving me the chance to attend the STC conference in May 2019, where I got to network with others in my chosen field, to providing me with an online professional portfolio service, to just allowing me the opportunity to get the bachelor’s degree I needed to get my foot in the door. But more than all of that, going back to school gave me the chance to prove to myself that I am not my failures. I can do whatever I set my mind to, and I can have the life and career I’ve dreamed of.
This journey has been possible because of my amazing boyfriend, who encouraged me to go back and supported me so that I didn’t have to work and could concentrate on school. He puts up with the financial hardship and doing without luxuries. He also puts up with my long nights, stressed-out finals weeks, and ranting about everything from the inadequacies of administration and stale thinking to the technical difficulties of computer software. The brave man even volunteered to be my editor for all my papers, and he listens to me rattle on about art history and Greek poetry and technical ekphrasis and issues in technical writing.
There was a moment in my first semester when I thought of quitting. My chronic anxiety came back in full force, and for a moment I wondered what in the world I was doing. I was too old. I wasn’t smart enough. Who was I to think I could get my degree and start my life over? But then my boyfriend looked at me and smiled that smile that makes me feel like the most beautiful, smart, amazing woman in the world. I told all my worries and doubts to shut up because I was going to do this—for me, for him, and for the life we want together. I was going to work past all the emotional, physical, and mental blocks and finally get my bachelor’s degree after all these years—and that’s exactly what’s going to happen in May 2021.
LIZ JEFFRIES (ejeffri1@msudenver.edu) is a full-time student at Metropolitan State University of Denver, studying technical communication with a concentration in technical writing and editing. She grew up on a farm in Iowa and now lives in Westminster, Colorado, with her boyfriend. In her free time, she enjoys riding horses and competing with her boyfriend in observed trials motorcycle events.
