It doesn’t seem that unusual for older women to go back to school. A friend of mine has just finished her master’s in education, another friend is working on hers and a neighbor has started back at school for nursing. I also did my master’s in journalism as I was going through my divorce. In the majority of my classes, I was easily the oldest student but my fellow students were welcoming and I never felt out of place. While it was a lot of demanding work, I loved it and found it mentally stimulating and refreshing. Evvy, who was divorced after 42 years of marriage, saw the world as her oyster and returned to school for a master’s degree. Here’s her story …
I wanted to do a master’s because I never got a degree in England, where I grew up. My parents were very opposed to my going to college. I had a provisional place at University College in London but do well enough in my exams to get in. Then I went off traveling thinking I would go the next year but the traveling was too much fun – I went to Israel, I went to Paris. I became a newspaper reporter and then the ideal of going back to school was definitely not on the agenda. When my husband and I first came to America I could have gone to the Columbia School of Journalism, which had a one year program, but by then I was married, I had a baby and I couldn’t see how to make it work.
Now, I’m teaching in a professional program for teachers at a community college and it turns out I have absolutely no academic qualifications. Twenty books and articles in the New York Times don’t count and so I felt I needed to do something to show I had an academic qualification.
I found this course at Colorado University – a master’s of arts in Linguistics and TESOL, which is Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages. I applied and they don’t usually take older people but they are encouraging non-traditional students. Thankfully, for reasons beyond my understanding, I didn’t have to take the Graduate Record Exam and I got into the program. I became a college student. What I liked about the graduate program was that the students were all different ages with differing backgrounds, some were married and some had children. I knew I wouldn’t get through a bachelor’s with a bunch of 18-year-olds.
The first semester I thought I might die. I had to do all this homework, there was all this reading, there was stuff in class, and there were suggestions for extra reading. At the time I had been teaching two mornings a week and I stopped that for the first semester thinking I would see how I did. The second semester, I decided I had to go back and teach while I was studying. It was work. You have to get your homework done, your weekends are gone, your social life is gone. I have friends who say, ‘I haven’t seen you in two years.’
The second semester was better. I did my practicum in teaching and that was fine. This year I’ve got some courses I liked that fit into the program. I started getting As and things went much better. So I got through to the end – I got all the credits I needed and then you have to take these ‘comps’ – comprehensive exams – I could never do exams and so I failed those. At first they said I couldn’t graduate but my name was called out at the graduation ceremony and I now have a degree.
The Divorce Coach Says
Not having to do the GRE was a lucky break for Evvy – I had to do it and I procrastinated for about a year before deciding I was just being ridiculous. Then I discovered the journalism program didn’t even look at the math scores. I was also able to take a class before applying for the master’s program – that was my way of finding out if I was still capable of academic study!
If you went back to school or your’re thinking about it, share your story with us? What motivated you to go back? What are you studying? What do you like most about it?