Risks, Rewards, and The Personal Pursuit of a Higher Education

Life itself is a creative process. Each day, we each are given the same amount of time. Twenty-four hours. And we are given an enormous amount of things to choose from in which we can fill-up those twenty-four hours. The choices we make will always involve a certain amount of risk.

I’ll use my recently life exploration as an example. I’m forty-four years old. I had been taking classes for the last two years in the evening at Harold Washington College while working a full-time job during the day time. My job consumed eight hours of the allotted 24 hours that is given to all of us. This doesn’t include the two hours it took to commute to and from home each day either. In order for me to be able to receive my associate degree, it was going to take at the minimum, 3.5 years at my current pace of taking two classes a semester. I would be forty-eight years old by the time I graduated.

Over the last two years, my academic aspirations have grown a little more ambitious to me wanting to obtain a doctorate degree. The time commitment would require another 10 years, attending school on a part-time basis. I would be somewhere around… well I don’t even what to think about it.

I had to make a decision; and a risky one at that for my age. Do I continue my educational pace that I was on or shall I re-create a new picture for my life by leaving my full-time job to pursue college full-time? With the pressures that were coming to me from my thirty year old sales manager, the deterioration of economic conditions in the U.S., and the idea of me not having any real competitive and marketable job skills if my company had decided to downsize, the choice I had to make became a no brainer.

My friends and family (who I’ll call my support group) weren’t  really that supportive of my idea of quitting my thirty-thousand dollar sales job to pursue my education career. Debating my explanation had fallen on deaf ears as I tried to express my discontent with Corporate America along with my yearning and fears of not being able to feel I was making any real contribution to the world. What seemed important and logical to them was for me to stay unhappy, discontented and employed.

The outcome of my decision and risk, while it is still in the process, has yet to be determined. However, I can say the educational trek has been most satisfying. I have started to nurture my artistic skills in the areas of writing, drawing, and photography. These creative skills have allowed me be able to, with confidence, have the ability to express and share with others a part of me in ways I’ve previously could not. It as if a sleeping giant has been awakened. 

While the process of balancing and maintaining my financial responsibilities is challenging, it has stimulated my creativity and help launch an exploration into alternative employment and creative college financing. It is my hope, as I continue to pursue and develop my writing interest, to leave a road map in the form of a non-fiction book for other adult students who might have the courage to travel the same road as I have.