A couple of miles in my moccasins posted 6/30/2009 8:14:45 AM | 2 kudos what's this?     report abuse

Nightowl001

Short version of a long story is that due to some .. uh.. conflicts with the administration at my high school, the year I turned 16 (when I was a junior), I finished the year and did not return to school for my senior year. This was a mutually acceptable decision. I was already working 40 hours a week at that point. When I was still 16, the state of Kansas wouldn't let me take my GED until my class had graduated, so I had to wait until the following summer, when I was 17. Back in 1973, there weren't a lot of college funding options. My grandparents hadn't saved for my college education, and neither had I. Too long to go into.

I was offered partial scholarships from 3 universities based on my ACT scores, but a partial scholarship meant I would have to have a job, and two of the universities flat out told me they would not let freshman live off campus, and the idea of a roommate was really, really troubling to me. The third one was just too far away, and I didn't feel like moving 600 miles and maybe being able to find a job and a place I could afford to live... There were just too many things that could go wrong to take the chance. (This was before I got old enough to realize that as you get older, you show up with a diploma [or equivalent] and a check and you can get into college, test scores and grades be damned.)

There was a local university where I lived, and I took a couple of evening courses over a couple of years, all the while working and supporting myself. I got married when I was 22. My spouse and I both worked in the restaurant industry, and I discovered that our combined income and lack of any credit was enough that I could not qualify for a student loan at that time, yet I could not save enough for school. It didn’t help that my spouse was, well, to be charitable, not supportive of the idea of my furthering my education. She remained unsupportive of any of my attempts to further my education for the 28 years I was married to her. Feeling that it was more important to the relationship to find a lifestyle we could mutually agree on, rather than deciding what I wanted was more important than what she wanted, I never made any serious efforts to enroll in college again, all that time. I did pick up another couple of non-credit evening courses in literature and writing.

When I left my marriage at 48 (I was separated for 2 years before finally getting divorced), my options were limited, still. I was investigating online courses and degrees, when the very month I turned 49, I fell ill. Four months later, they removed part of my right lung because of an abscess. The surgery was without complications, but my recovery has not been. I spent 10 days in the hospital following surgery, and have been left with a condition known as post-thoracotomy pain syndrome. It has only been in about the last year that I have finally been able to achieve the level of activity and effort that I enjoyed previously.

So, here I am, at 53, with “some college.” While I have again considered getting a degree, I am no more certain what field I would LIKE to get a degree in tham I was at 17. My interests are broad. My LOVES are airplanes and aeronautics and music and movies. But, Embryriddle University requires that you be a licensed pilot, and I can never be. They don’t let near-blind people with a history of retinopathy and chest pain fly (and they don’t make distinctions about what causes the chest pain). And I have a hearing deficit. Beethoven may have been able to compose while deaf, but I have no illusions that I’m Beethoven.

I’m faced with the decision of how much time, effort and money I invest to be prepared to work in a field in which I will likely have little more than 5 years, and almost certainly less than 10, to work, or if I should turn that effort to other endeavors of a more freelance nature that will require neither a degree nor an employer (an alternative I am leaning more and more in favor of).

Anyone who wants to interpret all this as my not being able to “hack” college is entirely free to do so, of course.

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