by Emeralddawnn

Created on: December 05, 2008

When you first start college, it can be a little nerve racking. You are unsure of who you are going to meet and what the teachers are like. This feeling is with any first time college attendee whether you are 18, 30 or older. For the older non-traditional generation, the feeling is even more so nerve wracking. Why? Chances are many of those kids sitting in your Freshman English or College Algebra class are near the 18 years of age range.

It just so happens that was me nearly 10 years ago nerve racked and unsure if going to college would be all it was cracked up to be. After all, I was a mother and full-time university housekeeper. How would I pull off being a part-time student with homework to boot in with a bunch of 18 year old underclassmen?

I didn't know who I would meet, if I would become friends with any of them. After all, I was 22 years old when I started college. I had a toddler and husband at home that were waiting for me to come home and feed them. How would I handle the stress of it all?

However, it took just one professor and two fellow non-traditional students to see that I didn't feel so out of place anymore. After all, these fellow students were there for the first time themselves. One student named Misty Adams was in my Developmental Algebra class. Like me, she didn't pass her ACT Math section with flying colors. The second student was in my Freshman English class. His name is James Stacey. How I met him happened to be through an assignment we had to do in class.

This professor, I believe his name was Mr. Kitterman, asked us to write a short paragraph about who we were. While everyone was naming who they were, I decided to go a different route. This caught James' attention and his eye. For my paragraph I wrote that my name was not important but who I was was. I was a wife for the past three years and a mother to a three year old toddler. If they looked for me, they'd find me in the crowd by looking down and for the child sitting on my hip. I ended up with an A for the paragraph and an A for the entire semester. (In fact, for Mr. Kitterman's class, I never received anything less than an A.)

While I already knew I wanted to be a writer it was his enthusiasm that encouraged me to stay with it. I worked as hard as I could despite several life-changing developments. I got divorced a year later from my husband and became a single mom, living on the campus. I had been sexually assaulted by someone I knew and had worked with. I was placed on academic warning

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