When a 35 Year Old Mom Goes Back to School

“If we only knew then what we know now…” How many times have you said this throughout your life? It rings true for me especially since I decided to pursue a college career at the seasoned age of 35 years. 

It all began after some 17 years on the field as a nail tech had run its course.  I had been involved in the fashion and beauty industry since I was 16 years old. Like any career there’s going to be some highs and lows, all of them learning nuggets to put into the jar of life’s wisdom. But it never occurred to me that I would abandon the only thing I knew how to do and then to follow up with marching into the unfamiliar territory of 21^st Century post-education.

Whoa! School has most definitely changed since my days in H.S back in the early 90’s. We didn’t even have Internet then or at least it wasn’t mainstream yet. I mean, can you actually imagine a world without Internet?… this moment in time actually existed, and not that long ago either.The internet is such a major milestone in our society’s culture and holds major importance that, as I write this, my spell-check is giving an error as I type Internet without capitalizing the first letter … yeah people, it’s that important.

Now terms such as tweeting, Facebook, and hashtags have become a daily repertoire. Social media is a lifestyle to existence for both personal and professional use. Gone is the day of using a phone to make just a phone call. Now we have smartphones that have virtually replaced the need for ­­___________ [you fill in the blank]. A baby-boomer observes as I tell my 5 year old to “look it up on my phone.” Puzzled as to what I could possibly be referring to, she reminded me of a time when a phone only made phone calls not instantly searching “Olivia the Pig” episodes on YouTube via voice activation because my 5 year old can’t spell, yet she knows how to navigate a digital device better than most adults she knows.

I admit it, I’m a technology junkie! I love it but it gets difficult keeping up with its constant, almost daily changes. +Marc Prensky coined the term Digital Immigrant/Digital Native; the former referring to one who was born before the digital age (that would be me) and the later are those born into this technology phenomenon (that would be my 5 year old).  His depiction of the way those were educated in the past versus how we need to educate this new digital generation now, gives insight on how different we are from the digital generation and the ones to follow and how we have to continually adapt in order to keep up. And that’s kind of the way it’s always been, adapting for survival - It’s just now we’re having to keep up at a much faster pace.

So I’ve succumbed to this digital world we live in and are taking undergraduate classes for my B.S. in Internet Marketing, online. And I’m loving it! For a brief moment I enjoyed walking the halls of my community college as I completed my gen eds, feeling kind of cool like I was eighteen but eventually that flavor wore stale and reality kicked in: I’m a digital immigrant living in a digital native’s world. So I put myself into my place, in front of my computer, conversing with fellow classmates from all over the nation… in my PJ’s.