Feeling old school

Looking back at my college experience

An illustration of a woman working at a desk. A phone is in her left hand and her right is typing on a laptop. // Illustration by Julia Vreeman

“No way, you don’t look that old,” “I never would have guessed that,” “I thought you were 20.” A new classmate has said a variation of one of these statements to me every quarter since arriving at Western Washington University.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” sums up my response every time — a response that has become truer after every utterance of it.

This is my last quarter on campus, I am graduating, and I am 30 years old…

In a sea of people, each person is so uniquely different that they appear as generic blurs as I pass them. I don’t mosey or stop to idly chat as I pass the countless faces that are moving across campus. I move with a purpose; college is an objective, not a social opportunity.

When I compare my experience to those around me, the people who went from high school to college — the people who fit the ideal of an average student — I realize I never had a normal college experience.

Between homeschooling and Running Start, I skipped a lot of typical high school experiences. My first experience with college had me surrounded by people much older than me. I was too young to take part in the college social experiment. By the time I was handed my associate degree I was barely an adult with no clue what to do with it.

There was an ocean of living between getting that degree and pursuing my bachelor’s degree.

I met the love of my life. Lost my mom. Got married.

I worked dead-end jobs. Served my country. Had my eyes opened.

So much life.

I took a short hiatus between the Army and returning to college, and it is a good thing I did because there is a degree of whiplash from social expectations that you go through transitioning from soldier back to civilian. While there is a more subtle, but similar, transition from civilian to student, I don’t think I could have survived the jump from soldier all the way to a college student. Straight out of the Army, I was not yet relaxed enough to just go with the uncertainty of everyday life on campus.

I had lived so many experiences to end up back at a place where the majority are people who have just entered adulthood. Being surrounded by all these clean slates can feel isolating — having roughly a decade of additional life experiences sort of makes you an outsider.

“I definitely feel a bit more like an outsider at an undergrad program,” said Myles Weber, a 29-year-old journalism student at Western who is also graduating this year from the public relations track. “I find myself with the ‘I remember when I was your age’ thing or ‘I remember when I was going through that’ kind of thing.”

Our experiences separate us from the masses, and those experiences have shaped what is important to us.

“Things that seem important to me now are more serious and less fun,” Weber said. “I’m just feeling more aware that time is ticking, the clock, the clock is running, and I have to move with more intention to have the life I want at this point.”

The clock is ticking.

I felt this more than ever last winter quarter as a professor informed my class that ‘we are young, we have time to make mistakes and try things out, it’s not until we’re 30 that we have to start to worry.’

I turned 30 two weeks after that lecture.

That ticking clock makes us more driven and more goal-oriented — our actions are forced to be more calculated and intentional. At times the mechanical task-oriented way of moving through college can seem as if I am missing out on the experience and perhaps in a way I am and that is OK.

At a certain point in life, I think the idea of college loses its social appeal and naturally becomes this place to further a skillset. For me, that was finding a way to turn my passion for writing into a career that would provide for my wife and I. This is how I came to be on the PR track, dancing that line between corporate communicator and idealistic writer.

A 16-year-old me would have been more worried about being liked and making friends than getting good grades. Now at 30, I am just worried about getting enough job experience in the field of my degree because I know “good” jobs expect me to already have a decade of experience on top of my four-year degree.

Even though I didn’t spend my time socializing, I did however make a friend — someone I hope will be in my life for the rest of my days.

I think this happened because in the end, no matter the number of years separating any of us, or the experiences that separate us, we are all at college to better our lives in one way or another — those experiences don’t make us separate, they make us unique.

There is something special about having lived so much life before undertaking the undergrad experience — I feel like I am witnessing the future firsthand. I might have gone through more life experiences than these ‘kids’ but they are teaching me so much.

Being around the next generation has taught me a lifetime more about compassion, diversity and consideration for the people I share this world with.

Now to learn any of it, I need a translator as the slang has changed extensively.

I am graduating at 30 but my life is just getting started. And I have all of you to thank for that.