Wow. It’s kind of surreal to be perfectly honest. It’s been over a year since I sat in a classroom, and when I did I was at Georgia Tech in my fourth year of study. Now I’m at the local community college taking the beginning classes which I need for an AA. It’s a whole different eye opening world.
I’m now the oldest student by several years. I sat in the class and just stared around me at the 17 and 18 year olds and felt like the old guy. I watched in horror as the teacher defined “cite” on the board for the class, and I let my mouth drop open as people scribbled her definition down.
It’s a different ball game and I’m having to reposition myself mentally. Where I once attended a very well known and difficult (as proven by my performance) school - I’m now among a different echelon. I do not mean to speak down to them, I am among them and I am grateful to be on the train to academic success again - but it’s just a shocking event.
On top of the classes, I’m working a full time job and my life is a bit… hectic.
After classes today I went to the local office supply store and purchased a 2007 planner sitting down this evening and laying it out for the rest of this month. I have a vacation this weekend, but after that I am booked from the time I wake up in the morning to the time I go to bed at night. I’m going to be a very very busy man.
My friends are worried I’m going to burn out at work and at school, I think the more likely concern is just hitting exhaustion and getting sick. I’m trying to retrain my body, over the past few months my life has time-shifted such that I tend to crash around 3am and wake up around 10am, which no longer fits. Now I need to roll back to 1am to 8am. We’ll see how long it takes me to hit that.
Despite all the gripes and worries I have mentioned here, I truly am glad to be back on the “horse” and pushing forward again. I spun my wheels a lot this year and now I’m ready to get going.
– IG
I have similiar plans starting this summer. Having graduated with my BA 2 years ago, I’ll be taking undergrad classes again while working full time.
Keep us posted on how you are holding up, and anything you wish you had done differently, etc.
Good luck! Remember to take care of yourself in between everything else – eat a decent meal occasionally, grab a nap when you can, etc.
I went back to school 10 years after completing my undergrad degree. My grad program has a foreign language proficiency requirement, and I decided to get that out of the way before applying for grad school – I also decided to start at the beginning, with French 101, because it had been 12 years since I’d last studied a language. So not only was I back in school for the first time in a decade, but 32-year-old me was in a room full of 18-year-old freshmen. I wasn’t quite twice their age, but it was close enough. 
Good luck with your classes!
I have a question for you, though: if you already have a Bachelor’s degree, why are you going for an AA? Did you decide to change careers or something? I’m just curious/nosy. 
To make a long story short: I wanted to work in the Criminal Justice field as a security specialist (specifically network/internet securities). Since I have about 8 years field experience with computer networking, advisor after advisor told me to get a Criminal Justice degree to round it out.
Now that I am out in the real world, no employers will even consider me for this kind of position without at least an associate’s degree in computer science. They tell me that my current credentials don’t mean squat.
So remember kinds: Never listen to your advisors, they lie! Now if only I could convince financial aid that 23 year old me is indepentent of my parents for loan purposes! (but that is another rant which I’m sure a few of you have heard me go off on already).
Gah, that’ll teach me for typing my posts in word and pasting them into threads as replies. That was meant for another thread, but I guess it kinda fits… I’m an idiot, and we need an edit button.
Yeah it seems there is slight confusion here, I didn’t finish at GT. I spent 3.5 years there barely scraping by on their GPA requirements and then I failed to meet the requirements and they booted me.
Well the truth is they booted me at the end of 3 years, then let me back in and I did better than I had previously but not as good as they required and they booted me for good.
It ended up having one positive though, had I still been at Tech this year, I wouldn’t have been able to relocate to Orlando to help with family stuff while mom underwent her bone marrow transplant. With her transplant largely behind us, I’m trying again.
So I’m starting nearly back at square one with a new major since obviously scraping by at something isn’t a sign of enjoying what you’re doing.
– IG
Good luck to you, IG.
By the way, please excuse the hijack, but there’s something I need to say about something I said in your thread about an old lady who poked you. I gave you some advice. Later on, I looked at what I had posted, and I realized I wasn’t taking my own advice. I was routinely being very critical of myself, and I was habitually seeing slights and insults where there were none. I decided to start practicing what I preached. (proach?)
So, it turns out that you unintentionally helped to steer me into a happier way of seeing things. Thanks.