Attending College in my Fifties

 Hey there! It's Friday which means it's time for my weekly blog post. Look, I'm as amazed as anyone that I'm here doing this on a Friday afternoon for the fourth time in a row considering I only posted two times in 2025 and once in 2024. The only way I can keep this up is by keeping it loose and keeping the pressure levels low, low, low. Therefore, despite the fact that my brain is yelling at me that this is supposed to be a blog about creativity and art, I am going to tell you about my experience with being a returning student.

I am attending Arizona State University Online. I transferred all of my previous college credits from two different institutions to ASU in 2023 and I'm about to graduate (in May) with a degree in English. 

I went back to school at an advanced age once before, in 2015 and graduated with an Associates Degree (English with a Creative Writing Emphasis). That experience was actually really great. I was 41-43 then and I took maybe 3/4 of my classes online and the rest in person. I was nervous about being the oldest person in the classroom, but that wasn't even the case every time. I stretched myself and pushed myself beyond my boundaries during that experience and I still think back to my time there fondly. My creative writing classes and my art class, in particular, were so much fun, as they were both done workshop-style. I loved sharing my work and hearing everyone's critiques of it, as well as offering my opinions on their stuff. It felt like the best kind of community. I even kind of miss just the overall environment of the place. The little cafe and the library and that one quiet corner where I could just sit and read for a bit while waiting for my class to start.

This time, though, is not quite the same. Firstly, I'm a decade older. And while I am by no means alone in being an older student, I can not fully shake the feeling of being a bit out of place. It might be the fact that I do not see my classmates or professors in person. It feels ironic because I would think that my classes being online would have the opposite effect. Without really seeing anyone else, everyone becomes somewhat anonymous despite our tiny profile pictures and having our names attached to our words and that should, in theory, ease the feeling of being "too old." I think being able to see the actual people I'm learning with and from on a semi-regular basis, face-to-face, would ground me better, though. It would give me more of a chance to settle into the situation and shake off some of my discomfort with being so much older than the typical college age. In other words, I would be able to acclimatize myself better if I were more fully immersed in the experience, rather than virtually.

The anonymity and virtual-ness contribute to a sense of distance. I mean, obviously, I am geographically distant from the campus and from my fellow students and my professors. But, there's just something about being there physically that I feel like I'm missing out on, especially having experienced that before, both as a fresh-out-of-high-school student and as a returning, older student. 

All that said, I have had plenty of good experiences in attending ASU Online. I've been exposed to a lot of work and knowledge that I probably wouldn't have come across on my own. I've read books and watched films I never would have chosen. I've participated in interesting discussions, worked on challenging projects, and I've had to put my writing and communication skills into more practice than I usually do. All in all, I'm glad I decided to do it, but I will be relieved when it's finished. Of course, the question then becomes, keep going? Or, nah?

I have nothing to share for my creation of the week, as I am behind and I still can't share the one thing I talked about last week because the person for whom I made it still hasn't received it. As for my Ordinary Beauty photo, here is my top one from last week:

Late Leaf

And a runner-up:

Pointy