Back To School At The Age of 42

It is time to finish what I started

One of the crazy things about anxiety is that it makes me feel like I’m going to die on a daily basis. In my head, I’ve had three incurable diseases already this week and it’s only Tuesday morning. The great thing about that is that I regularly re-assess my life and my choices and last year, around my 42nd birthday, I started thinking about the fact that I left school at 15.

That’s right. I left school before I was legally allowed to, and nobody noticed. I slipped through the net. No teachers called my house, no social workers were banging on the door, no family member forced me to go. I had a disagreement with a teacher because I had a panic attack in the middle of my first exam and missed the rest of the tests. I was in the midst of a very difficult eating disorder, quite literally struggling for survival and at a dangerously low weight.

Doctors were dismissive, and friends were embarrassed by me and my parents were at their wits end. Teachers saw me as a nuisance because I was missing exams and lowering their average pass rates. So, at the age of 15, I made the decision that I wanted to focus on my health rather than my education. I just vanished from the system.

Since I’m still here to tell the tale, I think it was a good choice. I told myself I could always go back when I was ready and had every intention of doing that. But life’s not that easy…

What happened next?

At 16, I applied to go to a community college to study hairdressing. I got turned down and eventually got a job as a book-keeper instead.

At 23, I signed up for a creative writing class. I never finished it.

At 25, I signed up for a French class. All I learned was how to order an ice-cream and say I bought a new bikini.

At 26, I started to feel like I wanted to get my act together. I was a legal secretary by then and my employer at that time paid for me to enroll at a local university and do a vocational Paralegal Studies qualification. When I left for another job, I paid for a second paralegal specialism myself.

Then life happened. I got pregnant, took maternity leave and my role changed when I went back to work. Instead of being a paralegal, I was a typist and heir hunter — which was fun and interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed being nosy for a living, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

For a few years after I left that job to be a full-time carer, I wrote cat detective stories, a handful of erotica shorts, built up my blog, started a business which failed, mystery shopped and did any freelance work I could find. I even did foot modelling for a while (lucrative work but not my finest moment). Nothing has really been going anywhere and although I’ve had some entertaining experiences and people often describe me as “the most interesting grown-up” they know, I wasn’t really achieving much.

I started a distance learning degree when I was 36. It was part-time and I could take 16 years to complete it. I’ve been choosing interesting modules and doing it solely for self-development and I’m now just one module away from having a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts & Humanities, majoring in comparative religion and creative writing. It’s a messy, mish-mash of a degree that I can’t see being useful, but at least I can almost say that I’m educated to degree level — which is not bad for a girl who left school at 15.

The problem was that when I realised how close I am to completing the degree, I knew that I would have to do something with it to justify all the time and hard work I’ve invested. I thought about that 15 year old who left her exam gasping from breath and in tears. I thought about the 8 year old who had such dreams of a fulfilling life. I’m letting that little girl down if I keep doing crazy stuff like heir hunting and foot modelling and mystery shopping. She wanted more than that, and at 42, so do I.

Fix things from the inside

I had the crazy idea that the best way to fix things was to become the teacher that I had needed. Nobody else should slip through the net and be allowed to leave school with no hope and no direction. No child should be punished and humiliated in front of an entire class of her peers for a mental health problem she can’t help having, which happened to me. And I thought about my son and how he had been let down by teachers who told him that he couldn’t be part of the school Christmas play because his autistic stims would “spoil it for the other children.”

The world needs good teachers. And I thought the best way to fix the problem is from the inside. Once I had my degree, I wanted to take a Postgraduate Diploma in Education. The problem was, I needed two specific high school qualifications to enroll in that diploma, even if I had ten degrees. So, I had no choice. I had to go back to school.

Was it possible?

In Scotland, if you’re over 18, you don’t go into a high school to take these qualifications, namely Higher English and Nation 5 Maths. You have to attend what’s known in America as a community college and take the classes there, either in the evening or during the day. There are all kinds of people attending, but most are doing it because they want to get into university in the first place, or want to do a postgraduate qualification like teaching or midwifery.

I remember feeling so excited when I got the email to say that I had been accepted to do the Higher English course. My plan was to do the mathematics one the following year. I didn’t have to pay, because I am a full-time carer and I didn’t need references, since the class was almost empty and they needed to fill it up. So, it was all pretty easy. I would go on a Tuesday afternoon when I was usually relieved of my caring responsibilities for a couple of hours anyway, and spend that time building a future for myself — and others — instead.

I can’t say it was easy. I was extremely nervous about walking into the class, not knowing anybody and wondering if my teacher was going to be a tyrant like my old English teacher was. My mouth was dry. My jaw ached from clenching. My chest felt tight and I felt like I was breathing from my shoulders instead of my lungs for some reason. When I sat down and looked around, I noticed that as I had suspected, I was the oldest person in the class. Even though I had prepared myself for that reality, I was not ok with it. It just added to my anxiety. So, I spent most of that first class fiddling with my necklace to take my mind off the rising panic and writing down as much of what the teacher said as possible.

Over the weeks and months, I learned that things are very different in the 20s. When I filled out my application, I had been asked if I had any mental health problems and I ticked the box that said that I did. This meant that the college’s disability support team got in touch with me before I even started to make sure that I knew I had people I could talk to if things got too much. There were adjustments that could be made for exams. I couldn’t believe how different things were.

In February of 2023, I took my first exams. I was given 25% extra time and a separate room so that if I panicked, it wouldn’t be so embarrassing for me or distracting for anyone else. I scored 69/70 from three papers, meaning I had achieved an A with flying colours. My teacher said that he had never had a student with such a high score before for those exams. Of course, he’s used to teaching people who failed first time around or who haven’t studied in a long time. The work I did on my degree meant I wasn’t as rusty as a student as I could have been. I also don’t underestimate the benefit of all the self-development work I’ve done over the years.

The takeaway

I think the lesson I can share with you is that it’s never too late to go back to education, if you really want to and you can afford to — I’m not just talking about financially but in terms of time too. I recognise that a lot of people are working so hard that they don’t have the mental energy for it, but everyone should know that it is possible, no matter what your age is. It may not be at a traditional high school or at a physical university, but the opportunities are there. I’m lucky enough to live in a country like Scotland, where you can be educated up to degree level for free if your income is below average. There may be other funding arrangements in other countries, or perhaps an employer will sponsor you. I would advise everyone to check locally to see what is available to them, and if the answer is nothing, you can always learn online for free.

Of course, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever become a teacher. I’m not sure I have the right personality for it and my life until this point has not been squeaky clean. I don’t have a criminal record or anything like that but the foot modelling might call my morals into question for some people, although I’m not embarrassed about it and I think it shaped who I am in many ways. There’s always going to be at least one parent with an unrealistic view of the world who thinks it makes me a bad person though and schools would take that into consideration and probably not employ me. I know a teacher friend of mine who is very conservative is a little sniffy about it. Honestly, I think varied life experiences makes better, more empathic and understanding teachers but not everyone agrees. I would certainly have loved to be taught by someone who had lived life and made some mistakes, not some po-faced, apparently perfect, goody two shoes as a teenager.

The fact that I’m still a carer with high demands on my time is also an issue as is the way that every teacher I know is miserable and striking for more money. I’m not sure I want to get myself involved in a profession where people are thoroughly dissatisfied with the job.

Going back to school has given me confidence though and if I take nothing else from the experience, it’s that my past does not dictate my future. I can’t change the life experiences that brought me to this point, but I can keep moving forward and I can complete the education that poor health stole from me. Now that I have almost reached that day, the world is my oyster. I just don’t know what kind of pearl is inside yet.