A Road Less Traveled

This past week I started fall classes at the University of Wyoming. By itself, this situation is nothing out of the ordinary. During these few weeks, millions of kids are going through the same experience. The one thing that makes my situation unique is that I am not a kid. I am a 55 year old man going back to college after taking a break from school that lasted 32 years.

I attended this school, the University of Wyoming, in the early 1970s. I walked then on the same walkways to my classes that I do now. I sat in the same classrooms in the same buildings. Some of the rooms have been remodeled and updated, replacing the blackboards with digital projectors, but the feel of the classrooms is much the same as it was then. When I arrived in Laramie this summer, I took a temporary job that gave me a chance to go into the dormitories where I lived in the 70s. The rooms were empty from the downtime of summer. I saw that nothing has changed. The lobbies, the hallways and the rooms all look the same as they did then. It is almost as if time has stood still for 30 years. I went into my old dorm room. The same sink is still there and the same bifold doors still hang on the closets. I saw the same brick walls and the same corkboard above the desk. I walked down the hall and went into the rooms of some of my friends. Names came back that I haven't thought of in years. I went to the other wing where the girls lived. I could almost hear them talking and see them coming and going on the floor. The feeling was a little surreal and also sad that those memories are rooted in a time so long ago.

I am basically the same person that I was back then. The noticeable exceptions, at least in my mind, are that I now have a lot more life experience, and I am much more determined to succeed. Of course I am older, but I don't really think of that. Oh yeah, the one other thing that I notice, and I don't really like, is that a lot of the students call me 'Sir'. I don't like it because they see me as different. They see me as an old guy, and I don't want to be thought of that way. On reflection though, I suppose it's okay, because it shows that some kids are still polite and respectful, which I think is a good thing, and it gives me a little comfort.

I know that my situation is somewhat unique for a person my age. Not many people at my stage of life have the opportunity or the inclination to return to college. A lot of people think about it and fantasize about it, but not many people actually do it. My friends all congratulate me when I tell them that I am going back to school. Then they explain how they are tied to families and jobs and financial obligations, and how they couldn't possibly go to school at this point in their lives. When I tell my story, I always see a look of dreamy longing on their faces, but that look is often mixed with a look of questioning doubt, like, "How can you do that?", or, "Are you crazy?" They are stuck in their ideas that doing anything besides what they are doing would be crazy.

Sometimes it's hard to see the reality of my situation. It's hard to stop thinking in terms of a linear life that we are so conditioned to live. American culture says that we go to school when we are kids, and when we become adults we end our schooling to work and raise families. When those stages are done, we retire and wait for death. Every stage supposedly has it's order, but it doesn't have to be like that. Not really. We can do whatever we want if we just allow ourselves to do it. If anything defeats my success in school, it will be that I succumb to the idea that people don't do this. I can't give in to the idea that this isn't where I am supposed to be, that my life is out of order. I have to keep telling myself that it's okay to buck the trend. It's okay to do things differently. I am happy now, and that is what counts.

I have been looking for an event or a moment that really drives home the fact that I am in college for real. That moment came on Wednesday, the third day of the first week of my first fall semester. My class had just ended at 10:50 a.m. and I walked out of the Classroom Building toward the Student Union. I turned up the sidewalk in front of the geology building, and I was suddenly confronted by a broad, congested stream of students walking toward me. My first thought was, "This is it!" "This is the intensity of college that I remember. I am really here in the bustle of academic life." My second thought was that all the faces looked so young. All of them. I thought, "I am here, and I am a student just like them, yet I am unique in my age and my experience and my journey on my road less traveled. I'm like a red marble in a jar of greens. I am the sole representative of my generation."

There may be others like me, persons who have changed the course of their lives by returning to college at a later age, but they weren't there at that moment, and therefore I was the only one. At that moment I felt truly unique, fortunate, maybe even blessed. My realization on that day was that I am here representing all those people who give me that envious look as I tell them my story. I know that they want to step out of their average, boring lives and do what I am doing, but they have every excuse why they can't. I don't blame them. We are all locked into our lives in one way or another. Now I feel like I owe them something. I want to succeed so they can have their vicarious dreams. Maybe I'm projecting, but it's part of what drives me on. Now that I've had the moment I was looking for, it's time to get to work.