THEY WARNED ME, I DIDN'T LISTEN, WE WERE BOTH RIGHT: Reflections On Returning To School As An Adult

Back in 1997, when I graduated from High School, the prevailing advice from guidance counselors everywhere echoed through the walls and into the ears of every young student, “Go to college now or life will get ahead of you… Go to college now, go now… before it’s too late”. At the time, I sort of listened to the advice. I applied to college, but I deferred attending in order to use my life savings to travel (alone) and volunteer overseas. By the time I returned from abroad and entered the classroom, my mind was beaming with distraction from my still lingering adventures. I lacked any attention span for studying, ended up busying myself with outside projects - taking the train everyday into Boston to work in the theatre - and neglecting my school work. I wasn’t ready for college, so I left. As any free spirit might imagine, the years that followed were mostly marvelous. I worked all over the country in the theatre as well as odd jobs, met many wondrous human beings, and lived a fulfilling, improvisational life well suited to youth and naiveté.

Then, after a lot of soul-searching, I decided to commit myself to school, this time for real. Just as I made, what appeared to be, a wise plan for myself and my future (I moved out of state, enrolled in a University, found a place to live, got a job, and organized myself into neat little 5-year plans) the old guidance counselors words of wisdom suddenly came true: life got ahead of me. Two weeks into classes at The University of New Orleans, hurricane Katrina came and destroyed my school, most everything I owned, my bank account, and each and every plan I had so consciously designed for myself. The hurricane swept me back to Massachusetts with nothing but a pair of shoes and a heavy blanket of confusion. Life went by very fast after that.

If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

I clung to old habits, returned to the theatre and past jobs, experienced the brutality of financial hardship and the lack of options that go with it. I found myself working just to make ends meet - just as so many Americans do - and school was put on the back burner. There it remained while I worked to pay for rent and food, fell in love and consequently married an immigrant, struggled through the years of infertility that followed, and went through the arduous, yet ultimately the most divine, process of adopting my daughter. School remained on that back burner for nearly ten years until the accumulation of all my life experiences began to make sense for me in the form of returning to school to pursue Social Work.

artwork by Bread and Puppet Theatre

Now, in my mid-thirties, I have a much greater attention span and find myself learning intensely and enthusiastically in school - I’m on the Dean’s List with straight A’s as a matter of fact. I possess an academic drive I never imagined myself having before, and I owe it all to life getting ahead of me because, even if I didn't know it then, that was when I learned who I wanted to be in the world. I’m grateful for the lessons in privilege and oppression, how they shape a life, and my personal responsibility in acknowledging the many ways I am at an advantage over others. I’m thankful to have experienced the depth of heartache that true disappointment can yield, and even more thankful for the sense of accomplishment that sometimes comes later. Today, I am particularly grateful for the experiences that have taught me the value of an education, and given me a clear vision of myself as a social worker.