Slow & Steady Gets It Done

On Wednesday, D’Ann made mention of graduation (and gifts for graduates). I’m guessing she was thinking of 18 and 22 year olds, for the most part.

A decade ago this month, I attended my oldest daughter’s college graduation. She’d had a long career as a flight attendant (close to 20 years) but was ready to stay home, so she went back to school to prepare for a career change.

Now, it may have been the acknowledgment during the ceremony of the oldest graduate in that class or it may have just been the reminder that I couldn’t keep saying, “One day…” But I went home, got online, and I enrolled to take classes at my local community college.

You see, while I had some classes under my belt from years before, I never earned a college degree. I married and had kids instead, something I do not regret because health issues in my twenties might have kept me from ever having kids if I’d waited. But a college degree was still a bucket list item—and it was going to get harder and harder to cross it off the list if I didn’t get with the program.

I have always loved learning and have done so all my life, primarily as an avid reader. I must say, attending college classes as a senior citizen has been a fun experience (we are the first to turn in assignments!). It helps that I’m not doing this in order to begin a career. When a student attends college for the fun of it, there is no pressure about what to do and when to do it. You don’t rack up a lot of credits fast when you do it the way I have (one or two classes per semester, other semesters no classes at all), but slow and steady will get it accomplished. Eventually.

I’ve taken some great classes. Others were a little like pulling teeth. I was glad to get the math requirement out of the way, and although I don’t care much for science, I managed to find a couple of courses that held my interest. (My daughters are both science majors. They didn’t get it from me.) Two of my favorite classes had to do with film studies and another favorite was History Through Biography. And a paper I wrote for an English class ended up being published in the back of one of my novels, You’ll Think of Me. You can read that essay, Missing Daddy, Missing Pieces, here.

Selfie in 2014 | Selfie in 2024
Still learning . . . Slow and Steady

All that to say, the end of the journey is in sight, and if it weren’t for my book deadlines and the need to make a living, I could finish up this year. That won’t happen. It’ll likely be 2026 before I can check this item off my bucket list. So I’m just going to enjoy the elective classes I have yet to take. Again, slow and steady will get me there. And, I should mention, it is almost guaranteed that I will be recognized as the oldest graduate whenever that happens.

No gifts required.

~robin