What Do I Know About Being a Back-to-School Mom?

In my "About" page, I mentioned a little bit about myself and how was a back-to-school mom, struggling with the same things you are.  I'm going to fill you in a little more about my experience going back to school, so you know I'm sincere about wanting to help you.

I started going to college in 1999, at age 35. My kids were aged 13 and 11 at the time. I was a single mom in a small town with no real job prospects and going to work at one of the local sawmills didn't really appeal to me. So, I trudged down to the local college and signed up for classes. The school I attended was very small; it was a satellite campus of a college located 75 miles away. In fact, it was so small that it shared it's campus with a university also located 75 miles away. (Note-I'm Canadian, and two-year schools are usually referred to as colleges, and four-year schools are universities.)

It was plenty weird going into my first class with people ten-to-fifteen years younger than I was. Fortunately, there were a few other "old timers" sprinkled in here and there so I was able to keep my sanity. For two years, I bounced between taking courses at the college downstairs, and  taking classes upstairs at the university. Quite a few of my classes were by teleconference, which made it quite easy to mute rather boring lectures and discuss more interesting things amongst ourselves,  even if they were not quite on topic.

I got tired of this, and ended up pulling up stakes and moving to the States to attend Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA. At the time, Gonzaga had a program for adult students which gave students a 40% reduction in tuition--this being the only reason I could affford it. I also got married for the second time while I attended Gonzaga to a great guy who was and still is, a very supportive person in everything I do. With his help, and the wonderful professors at Gonzaga, I studied my buns off and graduated in 2004 with a 3.70 GPA.

Yeah, it was tough. But I still managed to cook meals, keep a reasonably clean house, go to my kids' activities and work part-time. If you really want to go back to school, I'm saying you can do the same. You'll have to be more organized  as a back-to-school mom than you ever have been in your life. You may have to put your social life on the back burner at times. If you have a procrastination habit, you must break it and never put off starting assignments.

At times, you'll think you'll never get your degree finished, and get very stressed out at times--but I'm here to say it is do-able .  Just let me know how I can help.

I'm here for you every step of the way if you decide going back to school is the right thing for you. Drop me a line at norma@back2schoolmoms.com , or leave a comment. Let me know what topics you want to hear about.