According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 61.4 percent of high school students enroll in colleges or universities immediately following graduation. I was part of the 38.6 percent that didn’t—though not for lack of trying. Life got in the way. Subsequent mental breakdowns were had. While most of my friends packed up and left our hometown behind, I catapulted myself into the workforce. But the writing field only became more competitive in the wake of AI. As financial and career instability threatened my livelihood and the unfulfilled aspiration of a college degree held my happiness and self-worth hostage, I filled out a Temple University application and finally joined the exhausted masses of college students.
Forget feeling uncool and stupid. What people might not know about being a nontraditional student are the brief flashes of false superiority when I’m the only one in class who understood my 50-year-old professor’s obscure reference to “Matlock.”
This high is almost always followed by an immediate and humbling ego death—I remember I am ten years older than most of my peers. I have more practice learning and growing from my mistakes. In terms of age, I have a significant head start on these people. In terms of talent, intelligence and time, most days I feel like I’m barely keeping up—if at all.
I try not to compare myself to the teenagers and young twenty-somethings whose full-time occupation is being a college student on someone else’s dime. They can get involved in student organizations, study more and take 18 credits without feeling like they’re juggling ticking time bombs. It’s hard not to feel inadequate as my peers seem to effortlessly navigate school life while the chasm of otherness has me thinking that could have—should have—been me if I had gone to university when I was supposed to.
I don’t begrudge the Gen Zers around me too much for appearing to have their shit together so young. A few times, someone has approached me and said, “Wow, Ashlee, you’ve got it all figured out,” and I always look behind me thinking they’re talking to someone else.
I’m not that much older than these people. Students in their 40s and 50s are probably reading this thinking I’m still a kid. I blame our ageist society for making me feel like I’m already at the end of my natural lifecycle and there’s no point in me earning a degree because I’m just going to keel over tomorrow anyway. I took a Women’s Studies class, for Christ’s sake. Shouldn’t I be more evolved after realizing these restrictions and rules are self-imposed social constructs? Would touching some grass or finally cultivating that Zen garden help me achieve inner peace?
Then there’s the loneliness, which feels pathetic and Prufrockian, but it’s the truth. At 31 years old, I am not an island. It’s normal to want to make connections with the people around you, even if you feel too ugly and slow and out of the loop. My internal monologue is screaming, “Why do you want to be friends with people who might be mentally stuck in high school? Are you some sort of creep who can’t find friends your age?” To my internal monologue, I say: I don’t have to justify that with a response.
Maybe I’m not in my prime anymore. Maybe I forgot to brush my hair or I missed the fist-sized hole in my pants because I was rushing to campus after my work meeting ran long. Maybe Saturday nights with my girlfriend are study dates where she, already well into her career, body doubles as I agonize over Foucault and the maze of his words. Maybe my stint as the nerdy fat goth has brought the traumatic mentality of high school cliques and cool kids into my college life.
This isn’t forever. For most, university is just a blip in their existence. There’s always going to be someone more popular, more cerebral, more organized, and more driven no matter where you go or what you do. You can be inspired by it, depressed by it, and envious of it. Give me the full spectrum of living. I want all of it.
