One week from today I will start my first day as a philosophy major at the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas. I am 41 years old and attending college for the first time, so I thought it would be fun to start a blog (another first for me) and chronicle my adventure! In doing so, I am hoping to improve my composition skills, typing WPM, and overall get in the groove of academia.
The U of O is a small private school. There are apparently only a few non-traditional students there, and only a few philosophy majors to boot, so it remains to be seen how well I'm going to fit in. I am hoping that somewhere in the world there are a few more "old guy" philosophy majors that stumble across this blog so we can form a support group! :)
So why now? After high school I went to a electronics school for a year and a half. While in school, I got married and had two children. Unlike many who marry early, I am still happily married to the mother of my awesome kids, who are both in college now. I used my education to go to work in industry, and eventually worked my way into an engineering position in an automotive factory. I made decent money, and enjoyed building automation, programming robots, etc., but after 20 years of this, I got burned out and began thinking about a career change. My kids are doing their own thing, and no longer need much help from me, so the timing seems right.
One day I was having a particularly stressful day, and decided to stop by the school (it is on my way), and see about auditing a philosophy class just to see how it felt. It turns out that the tuition to take one class is $3000.00! Not doable for me. So the admissions guy and I talked about what it would take to go full time, and it worked out that that was my only real option, since I could get financial aid, and a pretty hefty scholarship. So, here I am!
Why philosophy? Well, I've always been interested in a variety of fields: psychology, physics, biology, math, etc., so when looking at the majors, it seemed like philosophy touched on all of those areas a little bit. And I've always been one to ask the "big" questions.
So, I'm going to cut this off for today, but I am planning to record at least the highlights as I go along. I think it will be cool to look back in a few years and have a record of the changes I am bound to go through.
More to come!
Jim
PS. feel free to critique my comp skills, and if you've been down this road, let me know how it went!
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