Trials and Tribulations of Going Back to School After Thirty

This past August, I quit my job at an automobile parts manufacturing company that employed me for nearly fourteen years. My wife had just refused admittance into nursing school, having been presented with a supervisory position, (a chance to use the college degree in business she had obtained over a decade before). My job, as well as the factory itself, seemed to be slipping away, prompting us to make a rather risky decision: It was now my turn to go to college and work at the warehouse that my wife had been employed for over a year.

Here I was, thirty-three years old and a U.S. Army reject, leaving a full-time position to become a full-time student while working a weekend, part-time job that was not a guaranteed prospect.

I registered for Electrical Technology classes at Southern State Community College one day after being offered, and accepting, my position as an Order Filler at the distribution center warehouse for the leading retail store in the world. The job description seemed easy enough and, since it was the same job that my wife had held onto for over nine months before becoming supervisor, I was sold on the idea that I would do well at it. After all - I am an experienced weight lifter and I can move around fairly well...How damn hard could it have been?

I started classes the following September. English Composition I; Introduction to Basic Engineering; Basic Computer Programming; Engineering Drawing I, and Technical Mathematics. Upon my arrival in my first class, a fellow student asked me, "How many credit hours are you doing?" I learned that this lady, (who appeared to be near my own age), was Catholic when she made the hand to forehead-shoulder-shoulder Crucifix symbol when I answered, "Eighteen credit hours." I also learned, by her gesture, that I may be trying to chew up more than my throat could swallow.

Work was hard. My Saturdays and Sundays were each twelve hour days of bending and stooping; lifting boxes and setting them on pallets; driving a little "backward forklift" around, trying to make good time while not spilling over my freight that could be stacked as high as seven feet tall, all the while "talking" with a computer via a headset that would always fall off of my cranium. I would come home with arthritic pain in my hands and elbows that would refuse to let me sleep more than two hours on those nights, not that I needed it by Monday, mind you...(yes, I do say that with sarcasm).

Monday and Wednesday evenings was Technical Math. I am from an old age when "two and two is about four". This was "X and Y Vectors; Law of Sines and Cosines, and finding 'Hidden Triangles for the sake of making a mathematical argument'", not to mention wrestling around with a $125 calculator that had me tapping my desk in submission on more than one occasion.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were my full days. Eleven-thirty AM to one-twenty PM found me in English Comp I where I lost my love, (temporarily), with writing. I wrote Descriptive Essays; Definition Essays; Narrative Essays, and many more essays in between. I grew sick of self-expression and "trying to convince my audience to see things in my point of view". This class, alone, took up many hours of my life just trying to figure out what in the hell I was going to write about.

Between the hours of two PM and four PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I could be found in Introduction to Engineering. This class, though difficult, was taught by an experience electrical engineer who had a gift for explaining things so that I could understand. This instructor even went over topics in the agenda that reinforced what was being skimmed over in Technical Math. I understood and performed equations that I never DREAMED of being able to solve.

Basic Computer Programming followed. I spent the hours of four-thirty PM to six PM in front of a computer. After all was said and done, I can safely say that I held my hand up in the air for the majority of the class, beckoning the instructor to come show me what I screwed up. Blame it on my age, I guess.

My final class was Engineering Drawing. This was my "letting loose" class where I sat beside a fellow OLD student, a thirty-eight year old man named Brad. Together, we found our youth again as co-class clowns. We would draw perspective, mechanical drawings; learn about measurement conversions and recite, word for word, old Richard Pryor comedy routines until the smiling instructor would tell us to shut up.

My time as an Order Filler at the warehouse for the "world's leading retail store" came to an end just before this Thanksgiving and three class days prior to the end of the first quarter. My wife won the battle of the sexes and I, with nothing short of respect, concede that, yes, she did for nine months what I could not do - kind of like pregnancy, I suppose, (and, again concede). To say that I was ashamed was an understatement. I found another job as a sorter in a popular mail/package delivery company where I am still employed, part-time Tuesdays through Saturdays.

I was happy when my final exams were over. I was thrilled when I completed my first quarter and had five weeks, (though it was spent working), of academic recess before Winter Quarter. When the realization came over me that I would never have to open those two-hundred dollar-apiece textbooks again, I was ecstatic...

When I opened the letter from Southern State Community College this past Friday, stating that this old man - who had never made the Honor Roll between seventh grade and my Senior Year of high school - had made The Dean's List with an average of 3.77777, I found a youth inside of myself that fell, wasted, years ago.

Though I thought it was going to be easy, I recall my parent's words to me years ago:
"Nothing is going to be given to you. You have to go after it, work at it and make sacrifices. Then, you can talk about what you deserve in life."

I still have a long journey ahead of me...