Has anyone in their early 40's gone back and what was is like? How did you handle a career, kids and everything else that comes with being an adult while taking classes?
I take classes here & there.
The three tips I'd give you are:
1. Make sure you understand why you are taking classes, i.e. to get a better job or to gain knowledge or whatever.
2. Make sure you are realistic about your schedule, as it's a time commitment to take classes, commute, study, and juggle everything else in your life, not to mention a financial investment for classes, books, and supplies.
3. Make sure that you have an auditable system for studying.
I developed a really good system for dealing with school a number of years ago, complete with various procedures for things like writing essays, doing art projects, studying textbooks, and so on; I wish I had had it when I was younger! For me, the biggest contributor to my later success in school was having a solid school system.
A solid system has a couple requirements:
1. It can be audited (i.e. if I ask you how you work on different school-related items, you can tell me confidently & clearly
exactly how you operate)
2. It has collection of good procedures to follow for everything you deal with.
For example, how do you handle each of the following?
- School administration
- Semester preparation
- Organize a class
- Take class notes
- Do homework
- Study a textbook
- Write an essay
- Do an art project
- Master a math formula
Getting serious about having reliable procedures was a huge boon to my productivity & effectiveness in school. I used to sit & stare at blank pieces of paper & Word documents for hours when trying to write an essay; I now follow a clearly-defined procedure in order to get great results. It's just like following a recipe for a certain food dish...follow these specific steps to get that particular result. If you're in your early 40's, working, have a family, and want to go back to school, then you're going to need procedures to follow, and you're going to need
good ones to follow. I used to think that the best approach was just "trying really hard" & spending hours chipping away with no game-plan other than "just do it"; I am much more procedure-based now. For example, I can pop out a 10-page essay in an afternoon easily these days & know that I'm going to ace it, grade-wise.
Using a procedures-based approach really does make school about simply putting in the time & following the directions, instead of having to use a lot of willpower & motivation to get through each study session & class project. Getting serious about my study system resulted in seriously good grades. Took me a long time to figure that out (well into college, unfortunately). It sounds simple, but if you lack a good studying system backed by solid procedures, then imo you're taking the long & hard road to doing well in school.