Where do I begin...In the middle!

So, I'm nearly 42, a married mother of two with a job a house and a puppy...what the heck am I doing going back to University? I don't need to be doing this, do I? Well actually, yes I do! I think there comes a time in everyone's life (usually described as a mid-life crisis I believe) where we realise that if we don't do what we want to do right now, we're never going to do it! Some people buy Harleys, some people get tattoos, or have affairs or another baby! Me...I went back to University. I went back to the very building that I met my husband in over 20 years ago, when I avoided everything academic and learned how to hold my drink and survive without solid food! I went back to sitting in classrooms where I wasn't expected to assist the lesson, but learn in it. So am I enjoying it? Am I 'fitting it in'? Am I 'fitting in'? Actually, yes to all of these. I won't pretend that it's easy, but it is exceptionally satisfying!

Learning because you want to do it, and not because you feel you have to, is a fantastically rewarding experiene. I start each lesson like a puppy; excited and enthusiastic, desperate for recognition and praise. I silently pant 'Teach me, teach me!' at every Tutor and absorb every word they utter like old newspaper. I say I absorb it, that doesn't mean I understand all of it! Some of it is kind of confusing, yet still oddly enjoyable, and while twenty years ago I would have panicked at my inability to comprehend everything, I now don't care! If I don't 'get' something, it's not a sign of my personal failure, it's just something I need explained again! My grades are never going to be excellent, but why do they need to be? So long as I fulfill my own expectations, then I can do no more. I'm even fitting in with the other students, and have recently been 'Facebooked', if that's the correct verb! I won't be going clubbing with them, but I forsee coffee on the horizon!

Education is definately wasted on the young. Have I read that somewhere, or just paraphrased it badly? Whichever way, it's very true. At eighteen, even though I knew I needed an education to get a good job, and a good standard of living, I didn't actually want to learn. I left home and found boys, beer and staying out all night, and studying was pushed well and truly to the back of the picture. The result was, very bad results! I was fortunate enough to get a job, marry my soul mate, have the children we dreamed of and build a great life. Had I studied harder, maybe my life would have taken a different road and not been as personally successful! Who knows? I wouldn't recommend my path to my eighteen year old peers at University now, but I can more than sympathise with their desire to party hard and study less so.

My solution? Start in the middle! When re-designing the human race, the super-powers that be should switch around our teenage years and early twenties with our middle age. That way we could party when we're young, without fear of missing a deadline, and study when we are more keen to do so. At nearly 42, I have finished partying, hangovers are unbearable now so drinking tends to be an infrequent affair, and I have a thirst for knowledge, before the dementia sets in. I am also more financially stable, so student loans aren't so scary! All in all, being a student at 42 seems the far more logical choice!