As an adult in an established career, with a mortgage, kids to raise and a relationship to nurture, you have to really want that degree if you are going to set out on the road to higher education because you will meet many levels of opposition.
I met with resistance from my husband initially because he’s English and comes from a working class background. The tenets of socialism still resonate in him, whereas I was raised with the good old "bootstrap" mentality that you make your own luck and pay your own way. He thought there should be scholarships and programs for people like me, that my initiative should be rewarded by our social system. (Unfortunately, the two academic related scholarships I was offered were contingent upon my being a "full-time" student, an economic impossibility for us.)
My husband is a fine example of a self-educated person. He seeks out information about areas that interest him. He is very intelligent, curious and knowledgeable in a wide variety of subjects, including history, geography, aviation and his own field, graphic arts and advertising. He has so much enthusiasm for certain subjects that I am sure he would have made a wonderful educator. But unfortunately his working class British parents held fast to a certain self-defeating classism and did not entertain the idea of a formal university education for him. Instead, they ushered him into an apprenticeship in the graphics field at 17 years of age when a computer was not a tool of the industry. He did artwork the old fashioned way, manual paste-up. He eventually worked his way into positions at top
On other fronts I have encountered the “you’re too old to change careers” philosophy. No point in arguing that I feel I have a “job” not a career. Other adults in the field in which I work think that I am wasting my time and tell me so, or they patronize me with a look that says, “Good luck using that degree for anything productive.” I am told I will still be in the same job in ten years with a useless degree. Professionals with whom I work ask if I plan to teach. They see that as the only employment possibility associated with my degree.
It is hard to communicate a yearning to fulfill perceived personal potential. I have tried to articulate this concept to many a nay-sayer. I have tried to communicate that I have evolved into a different me by virtue of the education and the quest. I want people to know that the evolution is the value in what I have done. Terms are applied to the likes of me, such as “life-learner” and “alternative student” but can I prefer to be thought of as a late-bloomer with dogged determination.
3 comments:
The oppositions you have described are, unfortunately, directed not only at returning and alternative students, at least in my own experience. It is also not just coming from outside the university. I have dealt with department heads who insist that teaching is the only possible career track open to me. As an English major who intends to write fiction professionally, I have faced the same patronizing looks and the attitude that I need to find “real” and “productive” work. I have been told that publishing fiction is something reserved for my old age, once I have retired from my teaching position of x decades. Why is it that, out in the world and in the university, there is an attitude that a love of knowledge and a need to pursue something other than the default career choice are the useless notions of dreamers? If I cannot pursue my dreams until I am grown and you cannot pursue them now that you are, what time is left for any of us?
I love the ideas that you establish in this post and I think it really can apply to anyone seeking higher education. We are all at UCI for a reason and oftentimes, not everyone can understand our aims. I get the same quizzical looks from people once they find out I am an English major. Almost 100% of these people ask whether or not I plan on teaching. It is not an easy task having to tell people that teaching is not the only path an English major can take without seeming exasperated at the question. I admire your determination in pursuing this personal goal and only hope that others would be as persistent in pursuing their own goals.
My boyfriend and I have a similar dynamic. By this summer, I'll be a 20-year-old with 2 Bachelor's degrees, whilst he'll be a 30 year old who has yet to reach an AA degree. He's worked himself into his career position whereas I aspire to get credentialed as a teacher, a career which requires a four-year college degree and at least a year's worth of post-Baccalaureate work (not to mention the graduate degrees which lend aspiring teachers more competitive footing).
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