If you decide that in order to better yourself or begin a new career or are just a masochist and want to enter a graduate school program in your late thirties—or really, any time after your twenties—I’m here to give you tips on how to do it best. If you follow my steps to a letter, you’ll have a moderately successful graduate school experience. Either that or an ulcer.
1.) Have at least two kids
If you don’t have at least two kids, you won’t have one of them clamoring for attention at any given moment. And those given moments are generally when you are taking a timed quiz or have an assignment due in an hour. It’s really fun to feel like you’re not paying enough attention to your kids while you’re trying to school.
2.) Work full time
If you don’t work full time during grad school in your late thirties, it doesn’t count. It gives you an extra bit of time crunch that you won’t have if you attend only school full time! It’s especially delicious when work is slow and you have a ton of school work to do and can’t do it because you’re stuck at work.
3.) Figure out your due dates and let the Canvas app screw you up.
It’s true. The syllabus will say due at 11:59PM and yet your Canvas app on your phone will tell you it’s due by the next day. Then you wonder if it’s due at 11:59PM the next day or 12:01AM that day, or… Before you know it, you have a zero and you’re begging your TA for a chance to make it up. Living on the edge, for sure.
4) Complete all assignments on the day they are due
This really gives you a feeling of flying by the seat of your pants. Listen to lectures on the way to work or in bed before sleep. But definitely wait until the day an assignment is due before you complete it. There’s nothing like the deadline of 11:59PM when you start it after the kids’ bedtime at 8:00PM, and still have to go to work in the morning. That feeling. Mmm.
There you have it. My tips and tricks to be moderately successful at grad school in your late thirties. It’s not for the faint of heart! Type As may also have to let go of straight As because, let’s be frank, with full-time school, full-time work and full-time family, you really can’t have full-time attention on anything. It is possible. It’s just hard.
