I went back to school on a whim. I had dealt with the crippling anxiety that had kept me from living my life for a decade. Everyday, I was driving my older daughter to the same community college I had dropped out of 30 years ago (twice) and waiting for her in the parking lot. As I sat staring at the building, I thought, I’m here anyway, maybe I should finish my Associate’s Degree. It felt like something left undone.

Unlike when I was in my teens and twenties, it didn’t seem as important to have a career plan or a “major” for my studies. It was only important that I finish this thing I had started and how fitting that it would be at the same college where I abandoned it, and a bit of myself. I had a vague idea of focusing on writing, but for the most part I was lacking the required courses for an Associate’s in Arts, but I still wanted to take courses in writing as well. Luckily, I could keep all of the old credits I had earned in the past, so I wasn’t starting from scratch.

The first class I signed up for was Creative Writing over the summer, online only. My professor was amazing at communicating and I got really good feedback to improve my writing and to stroke my ego. During office hours she encouraged me to keep writing, that she could see potential there. Pieces I wrote for the class can be found here, here, and here.

My next class was also online only, Women’s Literature taught by an amazing professor around my own age. There was a ton of reading and writing and I’m glad I took just one class that semester. In addition to the assigned short readings, we were to choose two books from her list and read both of those that semester as well. I chose Women Who Run With the Wolves and Poet Warrior. Both life changing for me. Her feedback on my Lorraine Hansberry paper was that it was, “graduate school level writing.” Wow. I had office hours with her that went way beyond the scheduled 30 minutes where she told me she would drag me down the writing road kicking and screaming if she could.

This spring I tried two classes for the first time. One actually in person.

I took Digital Design online with a funky, artsy older woman who was an amazing teacher and gave great feedback and help. I created things I didn’t know I was capable of and it made me want to explore digital design a bit more. My other class was an in-person advanced writing workshop that I didn’t mean to sign up for. I thought I was signing up for a poetry class where we would learn to write poetry. It turned out to be very different from that, but very serendipitous.

(That class and it’s aftermath is actually what I sat down to write about, but since I’ve gotten this far with my college journey, I might as well stay on topic and write about the workshop in detail in a separate post.)

This summer I bit off a bit more that I could chew in taking Statistics (I am so not a mathy person) and Rock and Roll Appreciation, which counted as my fine arts requirement. Summer classes are regular 16 week classes compressed into an 8 week timeframe and I took both of these as online classes. I really should have taken only one course because my summer consisted of 8 weeks of spending all of my spare time (which wasn’t a lot with my older daughter working and needing to be driven to work and my younger daughter going to driver’s ed classes and all of the things that come along with being a mom) trying to figure out Staistics and not giving the other class the time I would have liked to. I really would have enjoyed spending more time with the rock and roll appreciation content since I have been a life long appreciator of rock and roll. Somehow I managed to squeak out an A in statistics which is absolutely crazy to me since I understood nothing.

The thing with all of the online classes I’ve taken (except digital design), is that they are all very heavy on required posts on the discussion boards. I suppose they’re trying to simulate a classroom experience, but it really is no substitute. The requirement is generally one post on a certain topic per week and respond to 1-2 of your classmates. In addition to the other work, for me it’s more of a burden and the responses are generally a generic comment just to get the requirement out of the way. But then, I’m GenX and I would rather just do the work myself and not have to talk to anyone else or collaborate on assignments.

Tomorrow, after only 2 weeks off from the last of my summer assignments, I dive back into another semester. Earth Science for my lab science requirement – the easiest science I could take, and Multicultural American Literature. Both online again. I’m usually a very enthusiastic student. Excited for classes to start, printing out the syllabus, getting my books early to look through them. Not this semester. Even though I find science to be interesting, and earth science especially to be full of curiosities about the world around us, I’m not excited about the level of work required after burning myself out on statistics over the summer. I would usually be very hyped for a literature course, especially one that sounds as interesting as this one, but instead I’m just filled with dread.

Was it burning myself out over the summer? Is it that I’ve taken back to back semesters for the last year? Is it that I’m very good at self sabotaging as I get closer to my goals (after this semester I should only have one more to go and I can get my degree in the spring after 30 years)? Whatever it is, I will of course dive in and do my best, but I’m not my usual excited self about this semester. I’ve enjoyed a couple of weeks of being able to read what I want, create things I enjoy, and work on things that speak to my soul. Maybe the key is finding time for those things along with the school work.