Recently I was wandering through a college catalog looking for information for my daughter. Now I’ve wandered through college catalogs a lot. I almost always look at what classes are offered in English and Writing. I look, I dream, I move on.
However, I’m working at the University now. I looked at the classes for a degree or two. These sounded interesting. There is a big part of me that says, “What are you thinking? You are too old, fat, settled, poor… and a whole lot more to go back to school.”
Then there is that other voice – you know the one – the one that says I double dare you. Well of course you can’t pass up a double dare. So being an intelligent researcher – I start looking at the requirements. Now this is my alma mater so I did my first degree there. I looked around and there really are a number of classes I would like to take but one class is nearly $1000. But they have a creative writing, poetry, fiction, screen writer classes that all sound very interesting.
All of this looking and thinking brought up a lot of questions. I don’t like not knowing stuff. It frustrates me. I talked to people and have all this information floating around in my head. My first degree would allow me to go back and get a second major without having to do anything more than take the classes I want. However, no financial aid would be available to me.
If I decide to get a BA or BS then I could get financial aid. However, I would either have to take a lab science class (yuck) or a year of languages (double yuck). I’m not good at any of them. Zoology I got a B and German I got a D. My mind is saying nope – shouldn’t do this.
Yet the email with all the information sits in my inbox and I can’t delete it. Do I want to be the oldest student in the classes? Do I want to deal with a bunch of teenagers in these classes? Do I want to hassle with tiny little desks? Do I want to add another degree to my resume? Would it still leave me time to write? Will it help me to get published? This definitely bears thinking about. I guess that is the stage I’m at – thinking about it.