Posted by Krystyna Hunt in
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In February, 2009 I found myself unable to get a job. The recession was in full blast and my work sources had dried up. I was unemployable. I was 63 years old.
For the last 20 years I had been trying to do the "right", "sensible", employable thing. I had shelved my dreams, squashed my gifts and talents and decided to "get a job" in the corporate world. I hated it, but jobs there could be counted on. I had been taught that if a woman could type she could always get a job and I certainly could type. So type I did. Until February I realized it was the 2009 recession and the demand for typing had passed with the analog age.
I am divorced with no children, so luckily I have no responsibilities other than myself. On the other hand, I don't have the moral support that close family ties will provide. I have always been staunchly independent but I can sense this might be too much independence to handle.
So having nothing more to lose, and having no safety net underneath me I thought maybe it was the time to become trained and educated at something I knew I could be good at. What was there to lose? Revelations like that can give you incredible courage.
In May, I applied to go to college full-time and train to be a journalist and was accepted.
I chose the college with a 2-year program because I wanted this diploma faster rather than longer. Other colleges had 3-year programs but with the same number of courses. This decision increased my stress level for a couple of reasons. One was that cramming 3 years into 2 is not as much fun as it would seem to be at first thought. The second was that this college was in a town outside the city where I lived. I did not have a car and that meant traveling by commuter train and 2 different transit systems equaling 4 hours of travel a day.
I had always wanted to go to college or university. I imagined basking in learning and cammaraderie, discovering new ideas, having loads of fun with intelligent peers my own age. But this was 40 years later and most of the other students would be the age I should have been if I went to college. I was wise in many ways, but totally clued out in others. I have been self-educated in a liberal arts kind of way. I have read a lot, I am an information freak, I philosophize a lot, I thrive in intellectual environments and thought perhaps this would be the link between me and the young students.
But it was scary. I had some kind of success and status in the open world, I had none at a college level. What was I doing? But I went ahead and am doing it anyway.
For the last 20 years I had been trying to do the "right", "sensible", employable thing. I had shelved my dreams, squashed my gifts and talents and decided to "get a job" in the corporate world. I hated it, but jobs there could be counted on. I had been taught that if a woman could type she could always get a job and I certainly could type. So type I did. Until February I realized it was the 2009 recession and the demand for typing had passed with the analog age.
I am divorced with no children, so luckily I have no responsibilities other than myself. On the other hand, I don't have the moral support that close family ties will provide. I have always been staunchly independent but I can sense this might be too much independence to handle.
So having nothing more to lose, and having no safety net underneath me I thought maybe it was the time to become trained and educated at something I knew I could be good at. What was there to lose? Revelations like that can give you incredible courage.
In May, I applied to go to college full-time and train to be a journalist and was accepted.
I chose the college with a 2-year program because I wanted this diploma faster rather than longer. Other colleges had 3-year programs but with the same number of courses. This decision increased my stress level for a couple of reasons. One was that cramming 3 years into 2 is not as much fun as it would seem to be at first thought. The second was that this college was in a town outside the city where I lived. I did not have a car and that meant traveling by commuter train and 2 different transit systems equaling 4 hours of travel a day.
I had always wanted to go to college or university. I imagined basking in learning and cammaraderie, discovering new ideas, having loads of fun with intelligent peers my own age. But this was 40 years later and most of the other students would be the age I should have been if I went to college. I was wise in many ways, but totally clued out in others. I have been self-educated in a liberal arts kind of way. I have read a lot, I am an information freak, I philosophize a lot, I thrive in intellectual environments and thought perhaps this would be the link between me and the young students.
But it was scary. I had some kind of success and status in the open world, I had none at a college level. What was I doing? But I went ahead and am doing it anyway.
