As Requested
Posted in response to a request from
nontradstudent . Added to my "essay" tag (which also has the Cell-Phone Treatise for anyone interested who hasn't read that one yet. Which is one I'm rather proud of - in case that wasn't obvious). Note - this is written is a specific essay form (the name of which escapes me at the moment), as required by the professor, and was the final project for the Freshman Honors English class.
Lisa G. Dugan Manor
Professor Schiff
English 151-06
19 April 2005
Enlightenment 101
Among the 14,000 students who attend Northern Kentucky University, thirty-five percent are twenty-five years old or older (“Eighty-Five Percent”). According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, “39 percent of all postsecondary students were twenty-five years or older in 1999, compared with 28 percent in 1970” (Choy 1). Adults appear to be returning to school in record numbers. Their reasons vary, ranging from fulfillment of personal dreams to career advancement, to retraining after a job loss (Watson). As the composition of the undergraduate population found on college campuses changes to include these mature students, some impact to collegiate culture is inevitable.
I began a sociology experiment the day I entered the Honors Freshman English class at NKU. With only one or two exceptions, the class was comprised of students who could have attended high school with my eighteen-year-old son. The seminar-type atmosphere involving discussion and interaction presented a unique opportunity to discover whether this forty-one year old mother of teenagers could successfully integrate into the collegiate social structure.
Murray Lerman, my father and a veteran non-traditional student, warned me before the semester began that I might find myself uncomfortable surrounded by “a bunch of kids.” Starting with the first class, I intentionally sat in the middle of the audience area whenever we moved to observe a film or presentation, to see if anyone would sit next to me. Two full weeks went by before anyone breached the invisible barrier I felt separating me from the rest of my classmates. The wave of relief I experienced as the smiling young man sat down beside me took me by surprise. I mentioned to him that he was the first student who’d been brave enough to sit with me, which in turn surprised him. From that day on, he made sure to sit near me, and since he was usually followed by several of his friends I found the barriers between us gradually melting away. The experience left me curious about how other adult students felt about their interactions with the younger population at NKU.
I contacted Terri Watson, an Academic Advisor with the Southwest Ohio Educational Opportunity Center, to discover what services were available to adult students, and to learn more about those attending NKU. Terri explained that the Adult Learner Services department had been reorganized. Various functions had been spread throughout different departments rather than remaining centralized within one group because of the diversity of needs. She explained that most of the services provided were now listed under “Educational Outreach”. Some were designed to retain students receiving assistance from K-TAP (Kentucky Temporary Assistance Program). The department also provided assistance to adults affected by the Workforce Investment Act, and established One Stop Centers at various unemployment offices to assist with retraining for those who have been “downsized”. According to Terri the biggest challenges facing adult learners today involve navigating through the maze of paperwork in order to secure financial aid and college admission, and finding a way to finance their education while balancing school with their other responsibilities. Assimilating into the culture of college life appeared to largely be a non-issue (Watson).
Curious about the discrepancy between what I had discovered and what I was feeling, I surveyed 41 classmates on their comfort levels around students in different age groups. Sixteen students surveyed were traditional freshmen taking Speech 101. The remaining 25 students were selected at random from two science courses designed for those pursuing degrees in the health professions: Physiological Chemistry Lab (CHE115L) and Anatomy & Physiology (BIO208). Fourteen of those students were traditional students under the age of 25. The remaining eleven students were older than 25 years of age. These students were asked to rate their comfort levels on a scale from zero to four regarding various activities with students in different age groups, including working together on group projects, participating in group discussions, chatting before or after class, and seeing them elsewhere on campus. They were also asked to rate their impression of other students’ comfort levels in the same activities. And finally, they were asked if they socialized with students in different age groups, and if so how often they did so.
I was surprised by the results. Of the 41 students surveyed, all but one student said they socialized to some extent with students from different age groups. Five students (12.5 %) said they socialized with students from a different age group once or twice a semester. Two students (5%) reported that they socialize once or twice a month. Nineteen students (47.5%) said they socialized once or twice a week, and fourteen students (35%) socialized more than once or twice a week. All students rated their comfort levels with students of different ages in the situations described as “3” (neither comfortable nor uncomfortable) or higher. Interestingly, of the 30 traditional students surveyed, 19 rated their own comfort levels higher than their peers’, while ten rated their comfort levels equal with their peers’; nearly a 2:1 ratio. The older students were more evenly divided, with five rating themselves as comfortable as their peers, and six rating their own comfort levels with younger students higher.
Armed with this information, I went back to my father for clarification on his expressed concerns. Beginning his collegiate career in chemical engineering, my father turned to business when he found that the stock market held more interest for him than chemicals on a conveyor belt. He received his MBA at Xavier University in 1972, taking three years of weekend classes to complete the masters degree. After I graduated from high school, my father again ventured into the world of college classes, attending Chase Law School at Northern Kentucky University for one semester in 1984, and then returning to law school at the University of Cincinnati in 1986. He received his law degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1989, the same year my sister graduated from Indiana University. He started law school at Chase because the school catered to adult students with evening and weekend classes, but found that working full time and going to school in the evening was too difficult with his family obligations. When he transferred to UC, he was able to tailor his work hours around his school day, and often called clients from the university between classes. The MBA was a lot easier, he told me, because he only went to school on Saturday. It took longer to get the degree, but it didn’t cause nearly as much stress (Lerman).
I received a lot of insight from my dad about his experiences as the oldest student in his class. Of the 70 or so students, ten were older than the traditional students starting their first advanced degree, but he was by far the oldest in the group. He found himself “cast in the role of Father Confessor” (Lerman) as many of the younger students came to him for advice and support. He noted that the majority of the students who dropped out in the first three weeks were women trying to juggle the demands of pursuing a law degree with the demands of marriage and family. According to Murray the hardest part of going to college as an older student was adjusting to the need to put studying first while still finding time to spend with his family. He also found that it wasn’t as easy to learn new things for him, as it had been when he was younger.
I realized that my father’s comments before I started going to school had less to do with the collegiate culture in general, and more to do with his concerns for me as a woman dealing with the inherent stress of trying to balance work, home and school. My concerns about fitting in had arisen from misunderstanding the context from which he was speaking.
Wanda Schindley provided yet another perspective in her book about adult learners that I had not considered.
In larger schools there may be more segregation of age groups. Young students may be reluctant to speak
out in class and to interact with older students when they feel their peers might not approve. Traditional
freshmen may still be overly concerned about what their peers think of them. (Schindley 9)
Taking all of the evidence and research into consideration, I found that I had to revise my conclusions concerning my personal sociology experiment. The students in my English class hadn’t been avoiding me. They had been banding together for safety, forming cliques as they had in high school in order to safeguard themselves from standing out. I wasn’t walled off - they were walled in. As Wanda Schindley asserts, “Becoming old enough to not be ruled by peer pressure is wonderfully liberating” (Schindley 10). And the rejection I felt during those first few weeks resulted more from the ghosts of my own high school experience than any intent on my fellow students’ parts. When I opened my eyes to the reality around me, I realized that I had actually created my own walls, based on false assumptions.
At the end of one of the surveys handed out to the students in the Chemistry lab, one student made a comment that really captures what I’ve learned from this experience. “I have made lots of great friends - even those under 21. All is what you make of it” (CHE115L-12). College is a time of broadening one’s perspective, opening to new experiences and embracing new knowledge. I’ve learned that there exists a college curriculum that goes far beyond core classes and major requirements, and my fellow students (of any age) make terrific teachers.
Works Cited
BIO208-02. Survey. 5 April 2005.
CHE115L-12. Survey. 5 April 2005.
Choy, Susan P. Findings from the Condition of Education 2002: Nontraditional Undergraduates. U.S. Dept. of
Education: National Center for Education Statistics. Sep. 2002. 26 Mar.2005.
< http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2002/analyses/nontraditional/index.asp >
“Eighty Five Percent of NKU Students Have Jobs”. The Kentucky Post. 7 Sep 2004.
9 April 2005. < http://www.kypost.com/2004/09/07/nkuwork090704.html >
ENG 151-06. Survey. 17 Mar. 2005.
Schindley, Wanda. Adults in College: A Survival Guide for Nontraditional Students.
Texas: Dallas Publishing, 2002.
Lerman, Murray. Personal interview. 6 April 2005.
SPE101-28. Survey. 5 April 2005.
Watson, Terri L. Academic Advisor Southwest Ohio Educational
Opportunity Center. Personal interview. 31 Mar. 2005.