RETURNING TO UNIVERSITY AS A MATURE STUENT: REDEFINING TIME AND PLACE

18 Oct

L-R: University of Limerick BA in Criminal Justice students Emma Brady, Monica Pazejova (Class Rep), Aislinn Ní Ruairc.

When I started my undergrad at the University of Limerick in 2009, we hated mature students. They were so clever. So confident. So fashionable. So fully formed as people. They spoke openly and unreservedly in lectures while the rest of us were too shy or too ‘cool’ to engage. Now that I’ve returned to UL as a mature master’s student at the decrepit age of 31, I’m sometimes afraid to open my mouth.

Okay, let’s try to get through an article about starting university in 2021 without mentioning the new C-word, shall we?

Before starting my current degree, I’d been working from home for almost two years. The pande-… situation… kept me from a real social life and all the other distractions that don’t include working or sleeping. In the face of that, I decided it was time to make some changes.

Like countless others returning to third-level education mid-situation, I was worried about what it would be like.

A time and place.

As I mentioned in an earlier article (yes, my column comes with a bibliography), college at undergrad level is all about time and place. A time of self-discovery and a safe place where that kind of exploration can happen.

My undergrad (New Media and English, a course that no longer exists at UL, that’s how old I am…) was very much a time and place in my life.

I would regularly hit up International Night before going on to surrender wrinkled fivers to Flan Costello (who needs to be protected at all costs in this current climate) and bop away to the sounds of MGMT, The Black Keys, and Lykke Li’s ‘I Follow Rivers’.

I’d also perform regularly with the UL Comedy Society – a society whose earliest shows I had a firm hand in ushering into life.

Will I do those things now? Would I even fit in if I tried? I have no idea. I’m not sure the time and place are the same.

Adam Leahy graduating class of 2013 at the university of limerick

Returning to college, returning to Limerick – a city I called home for almost a decade –, feels like an entirely new and alien world to me. And I have fears around what returning to that time and place means.

Becoming the loud one in the room.

I’m now very much the annoying mature student who tries to answer every question in class.

Truth be told, that’s mostly because I hate awkward silences. It’s also because, as with all things in life – sex, making necessary but scary telephone calls that would make for less scary emails, and ordering the pinkest cocktail on the menu because it’s delicious and not the whiskey sour because it’s expected – asking for what you want gets easier with age.

No disrespect to undergrads, but speaking up and asking questions in class is just easier as a mature student. You don’t care much what your peers in class think, you aren’t afraid of asking a stupid question just for the sake of clarity, and it feels far less weird calling a teacher by their first name than the ‘sir’ or ‘miss’ you’d have said only a few months previously had you arrived straight from secondary school.

From staff room to classroom.

Moving from the working world back to academia is tricky too. Strangely, you have to give up a lot of freedoms.

In my previous job, I was a de facto department head. That meant I had a lot of control over the shape of my workday, the work I did, the people I worked with, and the things I wanted to achieve.

Of course pursuing a new degree is firmly tied to the category of “things I want to achieve”, but there’s quite a bit of taking a backseat too. Whether that’s in encouraging others to take the lead in groupwork or even having to put my hand up to speak. At 31!

The author Maureen Johnson said something wonderfully insightful in her novel The Last Little Blue Envelope: “You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.” That’s exactly what it feels like returning to university as a mature student.