When I was younger, I saw a television show that centered around the lives of a bunch of college students.  A particular episode introduced something new to me.  One of the characters’ mother’s had enrolled in college and was in a class with her son and his friends.  Ever since then I have wondered how a nontraditional aged student would feel sitting in class with a bunch of “kids” and what would possess someone to go back to school after so many years of being in the real world.  I also wonder how they feel about learning, studying, and college in general.  This is why I chose to interview Mark Dingee, a thirty-one year old student here at Slippery Rock University.
             Mark graduated high school in 1990 and decided to take a year off before going to college.  When he was twenty-one years old, his young wife gave birth to their first son – 12 weeks early in a hospital fifty miles away.  At the same time, Mark was taking Organic Chemistry, which he said was “a real killer of a course”, and he was under a lot of pressure because of his ROTC scholarship.  He said that with all of those elements combined with his immaturity, he could no longer handle the stress and decided to drop out of college.  His parents took it very hard.  All of the other members of his immediate family had a college degree, which proves that college education is very important to them.  Needless to say, his parents were very enthusiastic about his decision to return to college.
             When asked why he decided to come back to school, Mark replied, “It took many years of working very diligently and getting nowhere to convince me to go back.”  He had been working for a company for several years, and during that time, he was doing his own work and playing the role of manager.  His location had lost it’s manager at a very critical time, and the main office would not replace him for some time.  Mark applied for the position, seeing as how he had already been handling the job when no one else would, but he did not get promoted because of his lack of a degree.  This was the main reason he decided to come back to school.  Another reason was that his wife had left him, and he was working long hours for little pay leaving no time to spend with his young children.  He was willing to take the challenge of going back to school and to work hard at getting his degree so that he could provide more opportunities and a better life for his children.
             Mark feels that classes are more challenging for him than they were ten years ago because he demands more of himself now that he is older.  When he was younger, all he cared about was passing his classes, but now he wants to know and understand why things are the way they are.  He feels that studying is no more or less difficult, however, the obstacles he faces now are different than what they were when he was nineteen.  His difficulties studying used to revolve around laziness, the desire to have fun, and wanting to spend time with his young wife.  Now he faces the obstacles of being a single dad, having to clean the house, take care of the yard, and fulfill all of his other adulthood responsibilities while still leaving time to study.
             Mark uses grants and loans to pay for the majority of his college tuition.  He feels that a student paying for school themselves makes an impact, but he does not think that the impact is completely positive.  “They are too stressed and exhausted to get as much out of their classes as they could on reasonable sleep and work schedules.”
            Mark believes that older students are more appreciative of college.  I agree that many young people live for the moment and are willing to accept whatever they hear to be true without actually thinking about it and forming their own opinion on the matter.  I also agree that younger students view college as a place to have fun and make new friends, when it should be viewed as a place to learn as much as possible before we are thrown into the “real world”.  However, I am not convinced that we appreciate college any less just because we are younger.
            Mark’s professors treat him slightly differently compared to his classmates.  He feels that they expect greater things of him than they do of the younger students. They grade him fairly, but they have an expectation that he will do or know more than the average student just because he is older.  I do not think that this is fair because the older students are taking the same level courses as the younger students, so why should they know more than we do?
             Occasionally, Mark feels slightly out of place in his classes.  He said that he feels like an old man because he was in the Army during the Gulf War when the majority of his classmates were in the second grade.  He wants the younger students to see him as a friend and a mentor. Mark enjoys talking with people and helping them, and he has already had real world experience, so he feels that he would be a good person for the younger students to go to for advice.
             I am glad I had the opportunity to interview Mark because I learned a lot about nontraditional-age students and how they feel being surrounded by people like me.  I found it very interesting to try and place myself in his shoes and understand where he is coming from.  I am not sure I would have the courage or the determination to do what Mark has done.  For that reason alone, I admire him and anyone else who has made the decision to come back to school after years of being in the real world.  In closing, I would like to include a poem given to me by Mark Dingee:

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