I work full time and am half way through the fourth year of a law degree.
If you don’t mind my asking, could I have you and your wife’s ages and how you’re progressing?
The reason I ask is because I’m sort of thinking about studying engineering and math at a local college. Neither of these have anything to do with what I do. The thing is that I’ve heard a lot that there’s no way you can get really good at these subjects unless you’ve been doing them your entire life (I’m in my mid-30’s.). I’d be very interested to hear your opinions. Thanks.
At least one guy I know of did a math degree in his forties (only basic high school training up until then) and then went on to work for some company (not really sure in what position but I gather it wasn’t janitorial).
He has since moved so we no longer keep in touch. Another guy I know did a comp. science degree around the same age as you. Since I’m no expert, I can’t really tell you how math heavy it was though.
A few years ago I spent about a year taking programming classes - 8 hours every Sunday. The rest of the week I worked 10-12 hours a day as a chef.
Ask me in five years about actuarial exams 
:smack:
Yep, I currently work F/T and am finishing my math BA (HOPEFULLY…) this year.
It can be exhausting, I really salute people with kids who can do it.
Seconded: I can’t imagine doing this (working full-time and being in grad school) if I had a husband and/or kid(s) at home. I know that kids are a bigger deal than a spouse, at least in terms of being able to work and go to school, but I think I’d be iffy about it even if I were just married. More power to all the married folks who have responded. 
Well, I work 40-45 hours a week and take 2 classes per quarter, working on a B.S. in Mathematics. It’s not easy, but at least I always have something to do! 
I went to law school at night while working full time.
–Cliffy
I’m currently teaching myself motorcycle mechanics (a necessity with three bikes in the stable!). Hopefully I will be returning to school part-time to finish up my degree in mechanical engineering. I work full-time as a tech writer. My wife is planning on picking up a master’s degree, and she works full time as well.
In my neverending effort to improve my Portuguese, I read Brazilian literature, often at the painstaking pace of a couple of pages a day. I could go much faster, but since I don’t have a total grasp on which words are essential and which ones most Brazilians live their whole lives without knowing, I am forced to look up all new words. As a comparison, look at a book like “The Great Gasby” and see just how many flowery descriptive words the author uses that you could probably just skip over without much concern.
As I look up words, I write them all down in one of those bound hardcover record books – it is up to around 150 pages of word translations so far. I have annotations in the margin indicating which book I was reading and which page, so if I ever choose to read the book again, the notebook will serve as a convenient set of cheat notes.
I once translated a book of short stories by a gentleman named Osman Lins into English, but I lost momentum and never investigated polishing and actually publishing any of them.