Hah! Yeah, just make sure they’re really 18 and not just saying it. For the record though, I am a chick, and the last thing I want it some inexperienced 18 year old boy fumbling around. Actually, that is a kinda sucky thing, when you have no available love interests around. It sure gets lonely!
I agree with the others saying age doesn’t matter much. A lot of people are delayed in graduating from college for money reasons or whatever, and many more should take time off to figure out what they actually want instead of wasting money on classes they don’t have any motivation to do well in.
I doubt anyone will even notice that you’re slightly older unless you announce your age every time you meet someone new. I mean, come on, the difference between 18 and 21 is not that major.
Colleges each have their own culture. At my undergrad, there was a significant population of older working adults with families taking classes, so it wasn’t unusual for one or two people in each class to be the professor’s age. It’s never too late to start over if you want it badly enough.
Like others here, my friend started college at 18 and failed miserably after one semester (A+ in Party 101, though).
Now he’s 27 and back at the same large state school. Completely different major (from EE to pre-law). Since he’s been working for 10 years he knows what he hates doing for a job (electrical engineering and computers)and has actually gotten a lot of experience moonlighting as a paralegal so he knows he loves law.
He says he couldn’t be happier that he got those 10 years of “life” out of the way before going to school. When he was 18 his goal was just to go to school for 4 more years. Now he has a very specific goal. He also appreciates school a heck of a lot more since he knows the alternative - life in a cube farm - is far worse to him.
His only issues right now are:
- remembering how to study and be a good student. He says he’s forgotten how to read text for complete comprehension instead of just the general gist.
- Being older than the other traditional students and younger than the other non-traditional students (who are usually in their 30s or 40s)
- trying to juggle work and school
You’ll be fine - life is a good thing to experience!
I went back to (community) college when I was 29. I was the oldest member of the class. I ended up meeting one of my best friends there. I also ended up hooking up with the youngest member of the class for four months (which goes a long way towards explaining my appreciation for plump busty women, but that’s another thread). If you’re in your twenties, there is no social stigma in being a bit older than the majority of your classmates. And…
…maybe that’s what happened. 
No guarantee that it will happen at age forty, though. I’m going back for a week-long professional course next week, but that’s not the same. I understand that returning to full-time school in your forties is a lot different. There are a number of Dopers around my age (43) who have gone back to school. Spoons is one of them; perhaps he will look in on this thread.
Started college in 1979, dropped out in 1980, took a couple of night classes in the years that followed, went back to college full-time in 2001, and graduated in 2004. The majority of my classmates, of course, were fresh out of high school; however, a fair number were also my age or older.
Don’t worry about your age. “You’re never to old to learn.”
Somewhat contradicting my earlier post, I’ll add that age differences can be significant, if you believe them to be. I went to university about a month after I had turned 18. The oldest woman in the class was 24. At the time, I felt that that was an unimaginably-vast, unbridgeable age gap to cross for social interaction and hopes (six whole years!), but that was high-school thinking.
In that first year of university, people often grow up (and socially outwards) a lot, especially if they came straight out of high schjool. One learns to be social. It all depends on the maturity of everyone involved. (I was very immature when I left high school.)
One learns to handle alcohol. (In Ontario, we’re legal to drink at age 19, if we are so inclined.) If you don’t drink, like me, you learn that other people can in fact drink, and it’s not necessarily a stupid disaster, and one can be adult and laissez-faire about it. The same goes for other intoxicants. One of the biggest things I learned in that first year was to relax about the whole issue.
The OP, arriving at school later, may already have learned those post-high-school social lessons, and can settle down to study.
Yes, sometimes it turns into a big deal. Most of the people I go to school with are fine with the age thing (and if they didn’t ask how old I was, no one would know anyway) But one girl who was in my class always made the biggest deal that I was 5 years older. It used to make me feel so awkward and embarrassed. She finally learned some tact after I told her that yes, I was older, but we can’t all be so lucky to go to college right out of high school.
To her credit, she apologized, saying she led a pretty sheltered life and didn’t realize she was upsetting me.
That is another one of the things to look out for, the sheltered kids, who assume because you haven’t been to college yet, that you must have been having fun adventures all over the world travelling and such. Then they give you a blank stare when you explain that no, you’ve just been working full time.
I did live in the freshman dorm though, so I had to put up with this kind of stuff all the time. So happy to be living off campus now.
Thanks for the replies everyone.
You haven’t wasted any years, you’ve spent years figuring out what you want to do and why. That gives you an enormous head start over all those people who:
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pick a major because it sounds “cute”, graduate in it and then find out they don’t like the kind of jobs for which it qualifies them. Or, they want to do only one of the thousand things for which it qualifies them: the rest give them the creeps/the heaves.
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pick a major and, once they’re X% in it, they realize they should have picked a different one, but, because switching would mean “wasting a whole year”, can’t work up the bollocks to do it. Hellooooo! “Wasting” a year vs wasting 40? D’UH!
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work in a job they hate because they have no idea what else they’d like to do. I’ve met a few people like this. They depress me
I had a couple students who, like you, started college late. Because they’d started it knowing what and why they wanted, they did much better than the “regulars”. And they felt much older than most others (being more mature) but didn’t look it.
Another thing: Unless you go around and introduce yourseld “Hi, I’m hksj, and I’m twenty”, people won’t know (even if they do, most won’t care). Don’t make it a big deal and it won’t be.
Boscibo, I suppose I care more at the fact that I don’t think I’ve done anything in the intervening time than the fact that I’ll be a few years older… oh well, a stinging lesson learned early. :smack:
I took my first college course at sixteen. Started full time college at seventeen. Went to school four years and didn’t bother to graduate at 21 because someone had given me a full time job in the field I wanted and “I could finish later.”
Ditzed around. Got married, got divorced. Switched professions. Got married again. Had two kids. Got a new job where the recruiter said “you should probably finish that degree” then looked at the salary on the job offer he was handing me and said “but I don’t know why you’d bother.”
Faced layoffs and had a “if I got laid off what would I do” moment. Realized I probably should have a degree to round out my resume. Went back to school with a DIFFERENT major part time at the age of 37. Will graduate at 41. May or may not go to grad school. May or may not ever work in my new field - since it turns out that I wasn’t laid off, was promoted into a new job, and am pretty happy doing what I do. But, in a year I’ll have a degree - a completion of a college career started over twenty years ago. (Or completion until I decide I do want a graduate degree).