Note* Some of the facts are not correct.
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Editors Note about the issue: Klipsun Magazine
NON TRADITIONAL STUDENTS
ARIANA LOPEZ
Nicole Nelson and her parents pulled the heavily packed vehicle into the Birnam Wood Apartments. She gazed at the dark brown building that she would be calling home for the rest of the school year. Excitement was tingling throughout her body as she made her way to her apartment door, her parents following close behind her. She remembers the mixed emotion of that day. Once she was settled in, she walked her parents to their car. The goodbyes were bittersweet, however, she could see the pride in her parents eyes. She felt a sense of pride as well. After all, being here was what she had been working so hard to accomplish for the last 10 years.
Attending college is a new experience with many life-altering decisions to be made. For some students this experience did not come right after high school but much later in life. After a decade of living in the “real world” Nelson has made her way back to college. She searched for more individuals like her to share her experiences with. From this search she found other students that like her have just returned to school after experiencing the working world.
Six weeks into her first quarter at Western, Nelson, 29, finds herself juggling school, work and the usual task of finding one’s place in a new community.
Nelson is a self-proclaimed non-traditional student. Time is what makes non-traditional students stand out from the rest, she says. Older student may be another more literal, but not necessarily accurate, way to refer to such students. It is not about the age, she says. It’s about the experiences that took place during that time outside of school.
Finding others with that shared time line is what drove Nelson to create a post on Viking Village. This post has received over 20 responses that have resulted in a group bowling night and several coffee get together. From bowling nights to coffee get-togethers, these non-traditional students find support in each other to help them adjust to their new school and community.
Briana Kinash, 25, is one of the youngest respondents to Nelson’s post. She is also a great example of the difference between an older student and a non-traditional student. Not much older than her peers, it’s not age the sets her experience at Western apart. After high school she took a year of community college and then decided to attend art school.
Eventually, she decided to go back to traditional school and relocated from Seabeck, Wash. to Bellingham and is now working on her neuroscience degree. She is looking forward to graduating in a year or so and being able to move back home with her boyfriend.
Every story is different, Nelson says. We all have taken different paths and have found ourselves in the same place at the moment.
Nicole
Nelson describes herself a very shy person. She smiles, but her expression of sincerity does not change. She admits her friends think she is outgoing because she always seems to find herself socially involved with something.
“What they don’t realize is how hard it is for me to get involved,” Nelson says. “ I just love doing new things, so I force myself to be more involved.”
When Nelson graduated from high school in 2001, she had plans to continue her education. At that time, Nelson had been in a relationship for some time. Once she graduated, he proposed. She was married at the age of 20. He was in the military and he didn’t think it was important for her to go back to school, she says.
They relocated to Alaska, where three and a half years later they divorced. She then relocated to California where she worked for the same company for a little over a decade. Nelson would attend school sporadically through out this time, but she always knew she wanted to go back full-time.
Even though Nelson enjoyed her job, after some time she became frustrated with her inability to move up the company ladder. “I needed to go back and get my BA,” she says. The stress of not being able to advance in her field continued to increase for Nelson. Eventually her mother suggested she move back home and finish school. Realizing that she might never have an opportunity like this again, she took her mother’s proposal.
She moved back to Snohomish, Wash. and attended Everett Community College. “There were definitely more non-traditional students in my community college,” Nelson says. She assumed that Western’s student demographic would be similar, but she now realizes she was wrong.
Currently, Nelson is living on campus with a roommate and two other housemates. She evaluates her situation at home as stable. The age difference, while evident, does not have significant impact in daily interactions. Nelson says she can only remember one time when she was asked for advice.
She says that traditional students are at a point in their lives where they are redefining their identity. This is a process Nelson has already gone through, she says her identity is something she is very comfortable with.
“For traditional students school is their identity,” she says. “ Non-traditional students have other more prevalent identities such as being a parent, spouse or a career person.”
While Nelson doesn’t mind the companionship of younger students, she found herself wanting to find other students who could relate more to her life and current experience. Since her post she has met several other non- traditional students and has enjoyed exchanging stories with other non-traditional students, like Dan.
Dan
Dan Frank, 41, is in his second quarter at Western. Frank has had a harder time finding his place among Western’s traditional student community than he had predicted. Coming from a full-time position at a telecommunications company, Frank spent 10 years climbing up the company’s work ladder.
“My life was full of meetings, business phone calls and e-mails,” he says. Although financially stable, Frank realized he was not happy. Once this realization took place, he decided that since he was not married and had no children, he needed to reevaluate his life. After a few months of toying with the idea of returning to school full time, he took a leap of faith and did just that.
Aside from academic learning, Frank has learned other valuable lessons and made many observations throughout his experience here at Western. A distinct difference between the social norms from his school days and todays norms that Frank has observed is the attitude towards same sex relationships. While Frank identifies as heterosexual he finds this change refreshing, because no one should be able to dictate happiness for other people. Frank enjoys being able to experience these generational differences.
Although the adjustment was a lot harder to make than he had expected, Frank is enjoying this academic journey. While academics do take up a large portion of Frank’s life, he also has been searching for a way to find a comfortable social circle. Nelson’s post on Viking Village was exactly what he was looking for.
Every story is different, Nelson says. We all have taken different paths and have found ourselves in the same place at the moment. Sharing these stories was her main goal when reaching out to other non-traditional students. Time is an interesting concept, she says. Sometimes one can find themselves right back where they should have started.
