Meet Adam

The focus of my study is a 36-year-old male returning to college to complete his Bachelor’s.  To fully introduce us to our subject, I will briefly exam how he came to return to his studies. His nontraditional path coupled with a uniquely mature and focused mindset provides us with an exciting chance to examine the motivation and characteristics of the lapsed learner.

As the pandemic took hold last spring, Adam was working overnight shifts in a mental health facility. The work was emotionally and physically grueling. A fast-spreading, deadly, and mysterious illness only added pressure to this high-stakes, adrenaline-filled position. The experience, when coupled with the pandemic, provided enough negative motivation to push him to achieve a once put aside piece in his puzzle — his bachelor’s degree. 

“I had become frustrated,” he tells me “with a pattern of… being given more and more responsibility at jobs…and not being properly paid for the amount of work and responsibility I was being given.”  (Personal communication, June 20, 2021). 

While he is certain that this attempt will be his last and most successful, it is not without precedent. The path to education has never been a simple one for Adam. With regards to his progression, he confirms: “The student I am now and the one I was in my late teens might as well be two totally different people.” In his late teens, the community college environment failed to captivate his interests. A later push in his twenties earned him an Associates's degree.  With this in hand, Adam chose to focus on saving his money and joining the workforce.  He did so with earnest, and for years built his resume with a variety of positions ranging from Valet, to Uber driver, to a carpenter, to health care aide.  Now, arriving at the end of his thirties (though don’t tell him I used this phrasing…), Adam is a well-rounded and focused individual. He is aware of his goals, and he is aware of what works and doesn’t work for him in an academic environment. He reminds me—“I've also become more able to reach out and ask for help if I need it.” 

In many ways, he is the ideal learner when contrasted with the fidgeting, uncertain youth undergrad finds most of us. He also, as he will smugly remind you, is complete without student loans.

While many are successful with an associate's degree, Adam has learned to view an absence of a bachelor’s as a shortcoming. It’s clear to see he creates a causal relationship between this level of education, and the more labor-intensive positions he has held. “Ultimately,” he shares “I felt like I was smarter and more capable than the jobs I was doing and didn't want to be stuck in the same pattern for the rest of my life.” In short, it has been a thorn in the side of his pride for some time. With the concentrated discomfort of the pandemic and an unfulfilling job, the stage was set for him to finally put an end to this chapter of self-doubt. In the spring of 2021, Adam enrolled at a nearby university to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry.

As with many non-traditional learners, it is worth noting for our study that Adam currently works over fifty hours a week in addition to his studies. If this commitment weren’t enough, those shifts are also overnights. For this reason, our subject must be very intentional with his studies. It is also interesting to note that these features have actually made the remote environment of the pandemic ideal for him.  He may have to be up for hours during the day when he’d like to be getting a few hours of sleep before work—but at least he avoids the commute to and from school.

Adam does manage to get some studying in at the laboratory he now works in—but when I observed Adam, he was comfortably at home at his desk, ready to dive into his studies once again.  I’ll explore what that process looks like in the Setting & Learner Experience portion of this study.