I went to a meeting last night for prospective students interested in the Master’s in Education program. The program has three tracks and two of them are interesting to me: human resource development (with my background in training and actual HR experience that seems natural) and adult literacy. The unfortunate thing is that I’ll have to really want to go back to school in order to even make it through the admission process. I’ll have to beg, borrow and steal basically. I joked that the better-half should start hacking away at my undergraduate school’s student records office to change some grades on my transcript.
I have two excuses why my undergraduate grades are so bad (and they are bad enough not to meet the provisional admission policy). The first one is that I screwed around and didn’t focus enough. The other, and much more important one, is that I spent my four years learning how to be a person. I remember being asked once what happened to that person who went away to school because I wasn’t the same one my parents sent off. Ye gads that was a good thing. Which is all well and good but I think it is horrible that I still have to pay for decisions and actions I made over 16 years ago, when, as I’ve said, I was a totally different person. I guess it is really only fair that I’m still paying for decisions since I’m sure there are people still paying on their student loans. Or, is there a statute of limitations on that? I didn’t have student loans thanks to my grandmother.
I may discuss this further with the two professors who team-teach my class and see what I can realistically do. I just hate that my decision to go or not go back to school has, at least on paper, been made for me.
I didn’t have student loans either. I didn’t have much ambition either and I preferred the social aspects of college over the academics. I chose a weird major, East Asian Studies, and did well in it since I am good at languages. But in the ’80′s, there was a trend towards believing that Liberal Arts was the way to develop a well rounded person. I quickly learned that meant “graduate student in training”.
The last thing I wanted to do was go for more school at 21. Things have become so much more specialized since then. It’s interesting now that I have a kid who’s looking at colleges.
I envy your desire to go back and hope that your past doesn’t affect your drive. I definitely think that statute has come and gone. Most schools wil recognize that people have matured when they go back as adults.