Why I came back to school to earn my degree

 In the summer of 1974, I was an eighteen year old student trying to decide what to do after high school graduation. I was not sure if I wanted to go to work or continue my education in a college environment. After pondering this life changing decision, I chose to apply to a private college in Illinois. When I received my acceptance letter from that school, I was ecstatic, but scared at the same time. My next big decision was to choose a major field of study. What criteria do I use to come up with an answer to what field of study I want to pursue? The only area of study that interested me was Pre-Vet medicine. So there I was, a scared college freshman who made a decision to attend college and choose a major of study that was most likely one of the toughest that school had to offer.

After my first semester, I met with my freshman advisor for the first time. We both quickly agreed that a Pre-Vet medicine major was not the right choice for me. Since I already held positions as the Business Manager of the school newspaper and Student Manager of the cafeteria, it just sounded like a good fit to move my field of study to Business Administration. So that is the direction I took.

The next dilemma I encountered was one of economics. How was I going to pay for my college tuition? Since going to college was my sole financial responsibility, I needed to figure out how I was going to come up with the monies to pay for my education. I took a position on the local Fire Protection District as a paid-on-call firefighter while attending college. I took some additional emergency medical training with the fire department. I spent most of my time working the three jobs that I truly enjoyed - Student Manager of the cafeteria, Business Manager of the school newspaper, and part-time firefighter. All of these jobs took a large amount of my daily time. My college studies seemed to take a back seat to what my life ambitions were pointing me toward, a career in business or an EMT/firefighter.

The next few semesters I found myself truly enjoying the social atmosphere of college. However, I found myself battling the conflict between earning the money to continue in college verses spending the appropriate amount of dedicated time needed toward my studies. So, after the Fall semester of 1976, I left college to move on to start my adult life.

Since leaving college, I have established a thirty-two year career at a major telecommunications company. I have held numerous positions including: Service Representative, Assistant Manager, Assistant Engineer, Network Manager, Operations Information Control Center Manager and Area Manager, Sr. Project Manager, and Chief-of-Staff in the Technical Support organization until retirement in 2011. My spouse and I have raised four beautiful children and will be celebrating our thirty-third year of marriage next July. I have to say meeting my wife was the most memorable moment of my life while previously attending college.

Life has given me many more ups than downs, but one thing I always wanted to do was to finish college someday. Now that the opportunity is available to me at Governors State University, I want to finish that something I started many years ago when I was a scared eighteen year old student. If all goes as planned, I will graduate in the 2013 Spring semester with a B.A. degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. My goal is to share my adult learning experiences in some capacity at Governors State University after graduation by becoming an adult learning advisor. Not to say that I am still a little scared going back into the classroom. But this time it will be for self-enrichment, giving back to the community, and bringing closure to that goal I had in 1974.