In the UK, older students are called “mature students.” In the US, anyone over 25 studying for their first degree falls into the category of “nontraditional students”. In the Netherlands, it is uncommon to see a mature, nontraditional student at conservatory. One first year (traditional) student even opined that older students couldn’t make it in music. Her remark both scared me and challenged me.
The easiest degree I have ever pursued was unquestionably my MSc in Operations Research. I started it immediately after obtaining my Bachelor’s degree in engineering five months earlier. The summer break was long enough for me to take the long way home from Durham, North Carolina. After Okinawa and Taiwan, I backpacked through South East Asia before arriving in London to commence that one year intensive study.
On my way to a six-week summer course at Oxford, I transited through London for three days, long enough to fall in love with London and the idea of living there. The previous year, during my junior year abroad at McGill, I had come across the application of number theory and combinatorics, two math courses I adored. I loved that math could be so useful in a discipline I had never heard of. Operations or operational research grew out of the application of mathematical techniques to optimise and improve processes such as queueing, scheduling, and decision making. I loved my classes so much that I decided to apply the mathematical techniques in my life. I became an optimiser and analysed my decisions with a scientific zeal.
The degree I enjoyed the most was undoubtedly my Bachelor of Music in Composition. It was not the easiest, for I had to learn a new language (Dutch) and take classes with talented young musicians more than half my age. I was probably the only student who was as old as or older than their parents. I was the age of my teachers who gave me piano lessons, taught me music theory, and guided me through the four years. Despite these challenges, I loved every single minute of it. At graduation in September 2008, one of the administrators who handed me my diploma remarked that I took more courses than anyone else in my class.
I cannot say I enjoyed my first degree. At age 18, I left home for the first time and to the USA, flying from Okinawa to Honolulu to Atlanta to DC to Durham. Long distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive before the days of social media, mobile phones, and e-mail. I communicated to my parents via handwritten letters, and I’d read their letters over and over again wishing I could tell them about my feelings of inadequacy and discomfort. The beautiful campus of Duke University was like a fairytale. Everyone I met was good-looking, well-spoken, intelligent, and talented. I wrote an article for the college newspaper entitling it “Beautiful People” with my Chinese name as pseudonym. I wrote that I was afraid to pollute it with anything I could contribute. Intimidated by the privileged classmates around me, I hid myself in the basement of the music building. I’d practise piano for hours each day as though I was a music major.
I cannot say I enjoyed my third degree either. After my MSc, I worked full-time for three years in Singapore and London. Returning to study required a paradigm shift. I didn’t fancy sharing a tiny basement office with no computers except an old telephone and a crack on the wall with someone who had been meditating in the Himalayas and looked it, too. My final week of working in a bank in the City overlapped with the first week of school. I wore my Max Mara suit to class. Ironically, by the time we finished our doctorate theses, my office mate had become the high-flying corporate executive and I the student in baggy sweat pants. I envied the young doctorate students who had just finished their master’s degrees. There was no cognitive leap or adjustment required. I envied the MBA students, for their coursework was well-structured while I had to define and structure my daily existence.
I thoroughly enjoyed taking classes at UH Maui College during the six years I taught there. Tuition was free for a set number of courses per semester, a perk I cherished. I loved having the time in my part-time teaching load to take courses in creative writing, cultural anthropology, communication, and music. I loved being a teacher and a student at the same time.
At this age, I really did not expect to pursue another degree. I certainly did not expect the part-time distance learning MA in Music to take over my life. The huge amount of reading reminded me of the history course I took at New College, Oxford. This time, however, I had to write a lot more than ever before. I was graded rigorously on my research and writing. Ironically, this degree could easily be the most challenging one I’ve ever attempted, for I had underestimated it entirely.