Returning to school: challenges and opportunities

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 concerned by the idea of going back to school, especially after all this time. More specifically, I considered four things in relation to my expectations: time management skills, Internet-based academic research, my ability to choose the courses that interest me, and being able to enjoy a more equal relationship with my instructors and to appreciate how much I can learn from them.

I know that my time-management skills are much better today than they were when I was a young student. When I was a young student, I was too immature to manage my time or to prioritize my various obligations. Today, I have considerable experience in both respects and I anticipate that difference to be very helpful as a student this time around.

Another reason that I am anticipating that school will be a more positive experience for me this time is that academic research will be much easier for me, largely because of the availability of the Internet. Since becoming computer literate, I have often thought about how lucky today's generations of students are who have never known a time before they could simply type words into Google to find out all the information they wanted about almost any topic of interest. Similarly, while I am not a great typist, I know that it would be much easier to complete school assignments using modern computing software and other capabilities than it was when students had to do everything by hand in pencil and paper.

When I was a young student, I always disliked having to study for courses in which I had very little personal interest and that had almost no relevance to my life at all. I performed much better in the subjects that I liked but my performance in the other subjects that we had to take was disappointing in comparison. Therefore, I am very much looking forward to being able to study only the courses that I choose either because the subject matter that is genuinely interesting to me or because I know that it relates directly to my specific vocational goals.

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 adventure compared with my previous educational experience, there was a natural degree of challenge and even a certain amount of anxiety, especially in my earliest years of school when adult teachers were always authority figures rather than peers. As a child, I regarded teachers only as authority figures who I had to obey; it never even occurred to me that I could really learn from talking to them.