I did something very fulfilling recently: I went back to school.

I have always enjoyed school.  Growing up, I was a good student, and because of my abusive, dysfunctional home life, school was also a refuge.  It was a place I could go to perform well and be recognized for my achievements.  My good grades also helped keep me in the good graces of my abusive parents.  Even if my home life hadn’t been horrible, I would have enjoyed school because I love learning new things.

I had high hopes when I started college at age 17 in 1989.  I had been told my entire life that my ticket to a successful life was getting a degree, so that’s what I focused on.  Regrettably, I was unknowingly neurodivergent with c-PTSD, making it extremely difficult for me to keep a full-time class load.  I would sign up for 12-15 credits each semester, only to drop at least 6-9 of them after a few weeks.  Eventually this resulted in a large student loan debt without equivalent credits to match.

I spent the years between 1989 and 2001 in and out of college, eventually attending three separate schools and changing my major about eight times.  I just couldn’t decide what I really wanted to be and do.  I began as a pre-med science student, but I hit a block at calculus, being completely unable to understand the subject matter well enough to pass the class.  I eventually abandoned a scientific path despite my love for it, and delved into the liberal arts.  When I left university in 2001 due to financial difficulties, I was a Philosophy major concentrating on Religious Studies.

I had my first child in 2003, putting school on hiatus for the foreseeable future.  Our child was very high needs, removing any possibility of being a student as well as a parent.  Nor could we afford it anymore: children are very expensive.  I thought often of my unfinished degree and the more than 90 credit hours I had managed to accumulate.  “Just another year or two and I’ll be done,” I would tell myself as I dreamed, then go back to tending my wee one.

I last attempted to go back to school in 2021 when I signed up for a digital art class, which I had to drop in frustration due to technical glitches that created huge differences between the professor’s software and my own, rendering instructions useless.  The next semester I tried again with a comparative religion class, which I was doing extremely well in until the rug was pulled out from under us in our quest to find a new place to live.  Suddenly we had nowhere to move with a ticking clock on our lease.  I was forced to drop the class due to the stress.

The following year, we gladly left Texas for Oregon, and with no time to spare.  Our city had grown so expensive that we were rapidly bleeding money that we needed for moving, and we left in the nick of time.  Another month and we would have been stuck there.  I knew there was a university and a community college in our new hometown, but I was in no mental condition to attend class after a cross-country move, nor were we in a financial position to pay tuition.

The next year was better, and I applied at the local community college just to get my foot back in the door of higher education.  Unfortunately, we still weren’t able to afford it, so despite being admitted, I had to forego attending classes.  For the most part, I forgot about college for the next year, though I would still occasionally let my mind fondle that dream of finally finishing my degree.

Fast forward to last month, and I noticed the city gearing up to accommodate returning students.  I recalled my admission to the community college and decided to check and see if there was anything I needed to do in order to attend class, seeing as how we actually had the money.  They still needed my transcripts, so I had those sent along.  While I waited for them to arrive and be processed, I attended an advising session to find out what I should take.

It turned out that I’ve taken so many classes at other institutions that I cannot fulfill the community college’s requirement to take 24 credits in residence, but I can still take classes that will transfer to the local 4-year university, to which I decided to apply as well.  I am now waiting for my transcripts to be sent there for evaluation, and for a letter of recommendation from a professor friend we’ve made in our new hometown.

In the meantime, I’m taking a philosophy class on Theories of Reality, aka “metaphysics”.  My mood has already drastically improved by having something to do that exercises my mind and makes me feel intelligent.  I was once very aware of how intelligent I am and that buoyed what little sense of self-esteem I had, but that was lost over the years.  It’s nice to once again feel smart.

I fervently hope that my cumulative GPA from my other three schools is high enough to allow me to transfer to the university, where I hope to join the Religious Studies Department and also perhaps the Folklore Department, either as a minor or a second major.  Religion is the collective, publicly approved spirituality of any given culture, while folklore is the more private, often unapproved spirituality of everyday people, frequently transmitted orally.  I figure if I want the broadest and deepest picture possible of humanity’s spiritual inclinations, I need to learn both.

That’s as far as my plans have gotten: I don’t want to get ahead of myself.  I’m not sure if I’ll even get in, and if I do, I don’t know if they have requirements regarding how quickly I get my degree (some schools do).  My continued neurodivergence and other mental health issues still mean that I probably can’t handle a full class load, which means I may need medical accommodation for what is essentially a disability.

My hope is that I’m allowed to take all the time I need and that in a few years, I’ll have at least one degree, maybe two.  After that, I’m not sure.  I could continue my schooling with graduate work, but I wouldn’t know yet what to study.  There are many academic directions I could go with the knowledge I hope to gain.  I could also look for work that utilizes my education, or attend an ecumenical school of some sort with the intent of ministering in some way, perhaps as a chaplain.

Whatever I do, I would like to focus on populations of people who have been shunned by society: drug addicts, the homeless, the mentally ill, and former criminals, amongst others.  As a Unitarian Universalist, it is my belief that salvation, for lack of a better word, belongs to everyone, regardless of their deeds in life.  A person may need to make reparations for their crimes, either on Earth or in the afterlife, but everyone eventually finds their way to their heaven, whatever it looks like for them.  I do not believe that a truly omnibenevolent God would keep any of Their children out of their chosen heaven forever, and if God is nothing else, They are love.  None of us are throwaways to Hell as some would have us believe.

Of course, for me, now comes the hard part: the waiting.  I have a good feeling about attending the local university and hope that my letter of recommendation, explanation of various special circumstances in my life that have affected my grades, and the fact that I am an older student will cause a favorable decision.

I’m actually not sure what I’ll do if I’m not accepted.  My life is otherwise largely devoid of purpose.  Until I re-enrolled in class, I was always in a terrible mood and spent most of my day just sitting on the porch, thinking and vaping, allowing myself to fall into bad mental holes.  I had to claw my way through each day, desperately searching for ways to fill my time.  I now understand what is meant by the saying, “the leading cause of death of old people is retirement”.  Humans aren’t meant to lead lives devoid of activity or purpose.  We need fulfilling activities that make us feel like we’re worth something.

I’m going to continue to think positively, though.  I really need this.  I really need something in my life again that validates my intelligence and worth, because I’m not very good at doing that on my own.  I wish I were healed enough to be the sort of person who doesn’t need external validation to feel valuable, but I’m afraid that’s just not the case yet.  I’ve been too traumatized by others and made too many mistakes in my life because of that trauma, and maybe that’s why I have a desire to work with the downtrodden in our society.  I feel at home amongst them, but still feel that all of us are worthy of redemption, regardless of our crimes, which are almost always committed because someone else committed a crime against us, teaching us bad lessons.  We’re all born innocent: we need only reclaim it.