Feelgood News: Who is Nola Ochs?

With so much negative news on the television the Sunday Morning Show on CBS recently featured highlights of stories across America that portray positive news. One of these stories tells the unbelievable tale of Nola Ochs, the oldest person ever to graduate from college.

At 95 years young, Nola Ochs graduated from Fort Hays State University in Kansas with a bachelor's degree in history. Nola's journey to degree completion began in 1930 when she took her very first college course. Once she started a family Nola put her dreams of graduation aside. Years later after her husband passed away Nola decided to reenroll in college to keep herself busy. Despite the fact that earning her degree took Nola 30 years to complete, this feat got her into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Unbelievably, Nola decided to live in a campus apartment. She became a celebrity to fellow students and many of them looked up to her as a source of motivation and determination to succeed. One of Nola's fellow classmates was her own 21-year-old granddaughter, Alexandria, who graduated alongside her grandmother. The pair even took a class together once during her amazing learning adventure. Nola even managed to maintain a 3.7 grade point average proving her mind stayed sharp all the years she took classes.

Nola proved to be a real asset to some of the classes she took. Since her focus of study was history, many of the courses that she participated in taught about events that Nola actually was alive to see. This firsthand knowledge superceded even the professors and helped fellow students get a clear picture and alternate view of history.

Email, the Internet and computers are often difficult for some older people to get the hang of, but not for Nola Ochs. Nola propelled her reentry into college by emailing the academic advisor and not only used her computer for communication but began to take courses online as well. After she did well at these courses she thought it would be fun to venture outside of the home to take classes on campus. She never paid any attention to the fact that she was older, she just wanted to keep herself occupied and finish something she started so many years ago.

Although Nola graduated in May 2007, there has been no news of whether or not she put her degree to practical use in the workplace. We do know, however, that Nola fully intended start a career after receiving her degree and she's been quoted as saying she would enjoy working for Fort Hays University or on a cruise ship.

Nola Ochs is an inspirational person who proves that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it. Age is just a number and apparently doesn't effect determination. Hopefully many younger people out there will learn from Nola Och's story and realize that if a 95 year old woman can graduate from a university, anyone can.