Returning to school as an adult: challenges and opportunities

Personal Statement -- Returning to Education as an Adult

Rough Draft of Essay -- Returning to School as an Adult

The decision to return to school as an adult was difficult. On one hand, I realized that it would be an absolute necessity to make the career change that I want to make; on the other hand, I was never a particularly good student and I admit to being intimidated by the idea of going back to school, especially after all this time. At least when I went to school as a child, it was progressive and each new grade was only incrementally harder than the previous grade. In many cases, the material in the previous grade was very helpful to the understanding of the subject matter in the next grade. Returning to school as an adult is intimidating because it is not progressive; instead, I realize that I will be starting fresh and dealing with academic material that is designed for adults. In many ways, this seems more challenging than the incremental changes in difficulty such as that we experienced in school as children.

However, I also realize that I may have certain advantages as an adult learner that might very well make learning easier than I remember it being when I was younger. For example, I know that my time management skills are much better than they were when I was in school previously. I have often had to juggle various commitments and I am much more realistic as an adult about my commitments and responsibilities than I was when I was in school previously. The availability of the Internet is also a tremendous advantage that we never had in school and I am anticipating that being able to look up information and do research online will greatly facilitate my studies. At least I will not have to make the time and effort to go to a traditional library the way we did in school. Similarly, while I am not a very good typist, I already appreciate the convenience and organizational assistance that computers provide. Instead of writing notes in longhand and then rewriting them into study materials and outlines, I will be able to save a lot of time by using a computer for those purposes.

The other advantage of returning to school for a specific vocational purpose instead of gong through a traditional high school or college program is that there is much more flexibility to focus only on the academic material that I will actually need to make the professional transition using that education. While I realize that there are certain required courses that are not necessarily of interest to me, for the most part, I appreciate the fact that most of the program will relate directly to my specific vocational needs. That was one of the elements of my original education that I believe accounted for some of my relative non-interest in it at the time. In that respect, I expect to have less difficulty concentrating on my studies, precisely because most of the academic material that I will be studying this time around will relate directly (or at least indirectly) to my professional goals. In my traditional educational experiences, I remember that it was very frustrating to have to take courses that were of absolutely no interest to me and that I had to take only because they were required as a condition of graduation.

I am also looking forward to the opportunity to learn as an adult because I will be able to communicate with my instructors on an equal basis. That is something that will be a new experience because in my previous educational experience, there was a natural degree of intimidation and even a certain amount of fear, especially in my earliest years of school when adult teachers were always authority figures rather than peers. In general, I expect that returning to school as an adult might be a foreign sensation the first time I sit in a classroom but that it will quickly become much more comfortable as I get used to it.

Pre-Writing Technique -- Bullet Points and Thought Organization

My pre-writing technique consists of writing down every individual thought that occurs to me without worrying about where it fits in, how I am going to say it, or how it will relate to the other points I intend t make. Then, I look at my bullet points and I number them in the margin to establish the order that they belong in the essay. For example, my initial bullet point outline contained some of the following elements in the following order after I numbered them: