Trials of a returning student.

Everyone around you seems so young. But it hasn’t been that long, has it? You don’t want to be one of those people blabbering on about how old you are or how young they are, but it’s all you can think about. You might not blabber it, because you are three seconds away from screaming it in the middle of the food commons. Time to get a grip! Yes, they are really young. More than that, what is odd is to be in a place where everyone is the same age but it’s not your age. You probably attend things all the time where every single person in the room is about your age and you don’t even notice. It’s all going to be ok.

Maybe your plan is take a professional approach. You are going to zip onto campus and off again, treating it all like another job. If you’re not, if you’d like to get to know or work with other students and my previous paragraphs didn’t convince you, don’t constantly remind them how old you are because it amounts to a constant assertion of authority that isn’t going to make people warm to you and because they have already noticed.

Time management is often a big deal for returning students. On the one hand, you might have more responsibilities than the average 18 year old. On the other hand, experience has made you better at juggling. Be on the lookout for time suckers and savers. You may see the prevalence of smartphones and laptops as evidence of the decline of civilization, but for many people technology is a way to keep everything organized in one place that is more portable.

Like other students, make contact with your advisors and professors, but don’t make the mistake of thinking of them as your peers. This is a professional environment and the relationship between you and your professors shouldn’t be any different than it is with other students.