SURVIVING MSU: As a non-traditional student

Out of the loop and finding the groove

by Carol Navarro

Carol Navarro

I am the true minority student on campus. I am the ‘non-traditional’ student.

I learned my student label on my first day of class last semester when one of my profs eyed me and bluntly said, "Oh, you're one of those 'non-traditional' students."

As if he realized he needed to explain, he said, "What are you; about my age? 47?"

Well, yes, I had to admit. And then some.

It was a strange sense of relief since I had all these thoughts about what it would be like to be on campus at my age. Right from the start of my MSU experience, my professor not only pointed out my difference from the other students, he told me my label.

I'm not 'old.' I'm 'non-traditional.' I can handle that. I was never the traditional student anyway.

How many are there of us? I don't know. There are no "non-traditional" student organizations for us to seek out. Perhaps the people in admissions have those numbers, but frankly I haven’t had the
time to consider seeking that information out.

(NOTE: The Registrar's Office provides information on race and gender, but not age.)

I'm not really sure how the administration and faculty decide who falls into the category of the "non-traditional" student, but here's what it means to me:

• It's being out of sync with the trends and pop-culture;
• it's isolation, confusion, lack of computer skills;
• it's balancing full-time student status with maintaining financial obligations such as mortgage, car payment; it's preserving long term relationships
  with a new life;
• and it's digging deep for rusty math and language skills.

I am alone on campus without contact with people of my own life experience.

It's disembodying. I'm the faceless one in a sea of 44,000 eighteen-year-olds.

My instincts gravitate towards my professors for camaraderie, because after all they're closer to my age. But would that be interpreted as sucking up?

But, when I see another "one of me,", the person sticks out more glaringly than any white, Asian, Black, Native American or other minority on campus. I say to myself, "Oh good. There are more of us."” Perhaps the experience of confusion and isolation is the common thread we have with many freshmen and other students who feel like they don't fit in with the general population.

I've discovered that some of joys of being here are getting to know students and realizing this generation is full of capabilities and great promise for the future. But all that aside, there is a reason why I put myself in this situation.

Learning is a lifelong experience. And clichés have a way of presenting their true meaning when it's time. After raising two children, four stepchildren, settling into a second marriage and leaving a 20-year career in nursing, being on MSU campus as a full-time student is my escape from the first half of my life.

This experience is a holding tank as I make the transition from parent, home nester and retired career, to reinvent myself for the second half.

The brain is like any other organ, body part or one of the senses- if
it doesn't get used, it wastes away.

I see my choices: settle in and continue to let the neuronal flow become a cemented route of hardwiring of my old patterns - or I can mess it all up into a temporary state of chaos to see what happens and where it takes me... .

And maybe chaos isn't such a bad thing, if I can trust the laws of physics to bring order to my life.