As I sat on my sofa, I couldn’t help but think about the occurring chipped tooth incident last night and how I don’t have dental insurance. I yearn for the days when I have decent health benefits along with a nice salary.
When the days no longer feel longer than what my income can manage. It’s a myth, a misconception, that everyone at a certain age suddenly has every aspect of their life together.
I can count on more hands than my own how many non-traditional students are going back to school because of their low prospective incomes or job prospects, or a devastating setback occurred in the family thrusting them into the spotlight of becoming a college student.
Reasons why I am returning to student life as a non-traditional student
My case is a simple one on the surface: My income is low, and inflation is eating away at it. I live in a tax credit building that eventually became housing, so rent isn’t too much. However, the trade-off has come with lower quality behavior moving into the building.
Meaning that as I sit here typing away at my keyboard, I am forced to listen to the neighbors’ nonstop daily music play downstairs below. The bass vibrating underneath me as I sit on the Korean mattress I have been using as a bed for the last 7 years.
I haven’t had any back pain since a friend gifted it to me before moving to Japan. He had mentioned the painless nights he felt with it and thought it would provide comfort for me too.
He was right.
But now that I sleep on the floor and have a neighbor who loves to play the same songs on repeat 4-5 times a day, especially the song “Somebody that I used to know” by the artist Gotye, I sometimes find myself exhausted and irritable.
Office management is no help because it’s an older building built in 1908; they just excuse every complaint with, “Well, I don’t know if that person’s stomping, music, or yelling is excessive noise, but I can talk to them,” which goes nowhere.
So, caught between inflation and the deep-down understanding that if I don’t improve my income and career prospects, I’ll forever feel sandwiched between a twenty-one-year-old who screams vulgarities while gaming, living off his mom’s support, and a forty-something-year-old woman who blasts music into the early hours. Now that my own personal obligations, which kept me out of school, are winding down, there’s no greater motivation to head back than now
And thankfully, I will be on campus most days, if not every day of the week, working away on my online classes, researching investments, and writing this blog; the latter two will be done when I have time during study breaks.
Don’t get me wrong, either. I am thankful for affordable housing. I understand so many people are desperate for living units that won’t take a huge chunk of their income. I have learned I can be grateful while also working towards a better quality of life.
The case for non-traditional students is growing
With inflation and the last couple of years holding a great percentage of us in a headlock, I believe the case for older adult students returning to school is going to continue to grow.
Even for lower-income students who have managed to get a breather on their housing, they see the grim outlook on their future if they’re not able to attain a career path with higher wages or salaries.
Also, for those who have been in the workforce since traditional age, they are now starting to have their ‘work life happiness’ crisis regarding what they want to do with their lives.
Teen parents from my age bracket are now able to go back to school since their children are now reaching adulthood, that is if they refrained from having more children.
Over the years, I believe that non-traditional adult students will no longer have the ‘non’ attached to them as it becomes a new normalcy for older adults to go back and gain new skills and learn new pathways for success.
There have already been some articles mentioning this; see here and here for other perspectives.
The Broke College Student 
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