Everyone in life has goals and has a path they take to reach their goals. Where the differences start to occur is within which path and how you take it. For most of my life, I thought the only path was to finish high school, go to college, graduate, and start your career. Now, I know that this is not the case. Life has many ups and downs and so does everyone’s personal journey, going back to college as an older student comes with lots of benefits as well as many negative feelings that you must deal with while trying to remain focused and driven.

This article is from the perspective of a twenty-six-year-old senior at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. In this article I will be covering topics and experiences I’ve had and encountered during my journey back to school. My collegiate career has come with lots of ups and downs and all my childhood I would have considered myself to be a good student. When I arrived at my first semester of college out of high school I was lost, I had no drive or purpose, and this reflected in my performance as I did not do well. So, after a year away at college, I made the decision to drop out and would not return until I was twenty-one. During this break I would occasionally do a semester at community college to get most of my general education classes out of the way. After that, I transferred to North Central College pursuing a degree in teaching. However, even throughout that year I struggled because being a teacher is not what I wanted to do so I was still lost. So after about a year and a half of that and almost being done with the teacher program, I switched gears to Marketing. After some great classes, teachers, and experiences. I finally regained my motivation and my drive for success, but it was not easy at all. I still deal with doubts and negative emotions just like any other human being. I hope throughout  reading this article you can feel that you are not alone and hopefully my experiences can help other older students get back on track and navigate school as an older student successfully. The topics I will be addressing to help older students are the reality of being an older college student, overcoming imposter syndrome, balancing education, work, and personal life, getting involved and building a support network, and keys to success in college as an older student.

The Reality of Being an Older College Student

The reality of being an older student comes with lots of benefits as well as challenges according to the University of Michigan, common strengths for older students are, “Resiliency, life experiences, strong support systems, internally motivated to learn, problem solving skills and clearer goals.” While some of the common challenges are, Financial, feeling tokenized, feeling of invalidation, feeling of being invisible, culture of micro-assaults, on campus dating. These lists of common strengths and challenges summarize very well what it is like being an older student, it comes with mixed feelings and challenges. I feel academically I am sharper than I have ever been, and this applies to my academic’s grade wise. The older I got the better my grades became. Other than financial, which is an issue of being an older student, that comes with more responsibility which usually has financial connotations with it. One of the biggest realities that I deal with is feeling invisible as well of a feeling invalidation. To elaborate, socially I feel a bit invisible because I feel like it is hard to relate with most of my classmates as they are all around 20-21 years old, so I’ve felt it has been difficult for me to make social connections. With the feeling of invalidation that comes from feeling like I am behind where I should be in life. I know I am not alone in this feeling. I spoke with a fellow North Central classmate Marc Alday who is twenty-four, so older than most students we’re around. During our discussion, we talked about these negative feelings with him talking about how we are surrounded by people on the same path but at a younger age than us which personally can lead to discouragement and unworthy feelings being a bit older and seeing people further on in life than we are at this point. So based on this, in a way it helped me feel better knowing that other older students struggle with these same feelings. During my conversation with Marc, we also discussed the positives and we both agreed that the biggest advantage we have is a level of experience both socially and academically. I do feel in a sense that I have a bit of a competitive advantage when it comes to this. Another reality of being an older student is managing these negative emotions so they don’t impede on your success according National Library of Medicine a good way to prevent this is by focusing on your achievements rather than the negatives.