Forty-Five Year Old College Freshman? Maybe...

From about the age of 12 my biggest wish in life was to be a rock star and tour the world. Over the next 14 years I tried to figure out how to do that while staying true to my religious ideals. Growing up in the Sunset Strip 80's Glam era, that wasn't such an easy task and obviously it never happened quite the way I'd envisioned it.

Fast forward to 1994 and I was in the middle of what would become about 20 years of working in TV and film. At the time I was still near the bottom rung and decided I'd use my weird work schedule to go to school and see if I could figure out a 'grown up' career. I'd gotten through one light semester before my 'day job' (done from 11:00PM to whenever I got out in the morning) picked up and I had to make a choice. I decided I'd better stick with what was working and ended up in a pretty killer job for the next few years.

Which brings me to today.

For various reasons I'm almost positive I'm not going to leave this world as a colorist (not the least of which is I'm not working as one now). I've been trying for three years to see if there was some way I can go to school and squeeze yet one more career out of this worldly sojourn of mine.

Earlier in the year the wife and I discussed the next few years in detail and had it all worked out. I would get a BA online and right about the time our boys were both in school and moving along, I'd get down to business and go to law school; law being something I've always been interested in, and also a career I could still get 25 years out of even if I was starting out in my early 50's. I've known quite a few 75 year old attorneys...

Well, if you're reading this then you know what happened to the wife part. With all that I figured I'd better drop those other plans and quick. The problem's been, I can't. I still want to do this. Or at least start it and if the Lord has other plans, I'll certainly find out at some point.

So I did some more research this week and found a few schools that offer online education, but the programs and degrees are no different than the 'brick and mortar' versions those schools also provide. I checked accreditation and spoke with the head of the department at one of the schools and have been pretty impressed with what I found. So I got online and sent in my application this weekend. If I can swing it I'll end up doing one to two classes per 8 week term toward a BA in history (or 'American Studies') and power through it over the next few years until I'm ready to look at law schools.

When I was supposed to be in college I was doing this instead:



Now I'll be that old dude in the corner, muttering to myself as I try to bang my way through English 115. ;)