Hello. I thought I’d introduce myself.
I’m Angela. I’m currently a 38-year-old electrical engineering mother of 4. My oldest is 15 and the youngest is 7.
After years of coasting through life, I’m psyched about my future. I am at the very beginning of the pre-med stage and thrilled to be here. Unfortunately, the local college (recently moved up from community college status) does not have science classes in the summer. So to get my brain engaged again, I signed up for a condensed summer Comp II course. I had Comp I 20 years ago, so it’ll be interesting…
I’ll be taking chemistry I & biology I this fall. In the spring will be chemistry II and one of my other science classes (depending upon how the schedule falls). Thus, Organic I & II will be Fall '08 & Spring '09. I don’t see a quicker way to get through that series of prereq’s. I’ll fit the physics & biology classes in where I can. It’ll be a challenge, because I need to work full-time as long as I can.
I am so glad I found this site. I look forward to this journey, and hope we can enjoy the scenery together. Thanks for being my tour guide thus far 
Angela
Please…please, don’t call yourself old. I’ll be turning 40 in a couple weeks and do not think of myself as old at all.
Well, until one of my chem I classmates lamented about a particularly tough chemistry concept: “Wow. I like haven’t had that since high school two or three years ago.”
Me: “Yeah same here. I had it when I was a junior in high school…(stop to count fingers, then take shoes off and proceed to run out of toes)…24 years ago.”
At that point, I started to feel old(er). 
hak
hak,
I had my first Comp class last night. I was the only one that could’ve gone out for a beer after the class 
Angela
You wouldn’t be talking about Miami-Dade College would you?
BTW forget speed and think quality.
feeling the same way here… and I’m 26. thought I might be about average age in my class but seeing alot of young’uns as we say here in TX.
needless to say, hardly any of them work, just go to class all day or get to study while living at home with their parents. nothing wrong with that at all- wish I had that arrangement, just different for non-trads
Hi Angela,
welcome to oldpremeds and to the medical field! You have an excellent background and life experiences; I think you’ll do great.
The age thing hits everyone about the same. You look around at a room full of 19-year-olds and you’re 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years older (take your pick, we’ve got every data point covered in this forum!) and by the end of the first exam and the first lab you will be thinking of most of them as bright, hard working classmates and future colleagues.
I personally find it fascinating, as an amateur anthropologist, to observe the young’uns. When I was in HS and uni, there were no cellphones, PC’s, Palm Pilots, world wide webs, instant messaging, etc. You wrote papers on a typewriter and kept a bottle of white-out handy. It’s amazing to see how people’s lives have been transformed by technology.
Best of luck,
What’s comical to me is what happens as soon as the teacher announces it’s time for a 15-minute break:
Everyone’s cell phone comes out and the text messaging and phone calls begin.
hak
So True Hakado… funny thing is. my long-distance relationship has emerged into the text-messaging realm. I’m studying or in class when my girlfriend is working and it’s the way we communicate… funny how words written on a digital display can be interpreted in different ways.
- Miller J. Said:
needless to say, hardly any of them work, just go to class all day or get to study while living at home with their parents. nothing wrong with that at all- wish I had that arrangement, just different for non-trads
I can certainly realte to the "feeling like a fossil in a class of young'uns" phenomenon! When I started back to Ugrad @ UTDallas, they were very short on non-trads, except ofr night-time MBA classes. The day crowd was ALL traditional-aged students. I had a few that found me to be an interesting novelty - able to provide first-hand accts of things they were studying in history, I guess. Most were simply too busy to care & ignored the difference. And fortunately, only a small contingency had 'issues' with an older guy competing with them...esp when they learned I could & would go toe to toe with them.
I suppose what suprised me so much is that I’m taking this class at night on a military base. I didn’t think anyone would be straight out of high school. I assumed most would be like me – taking the class after work. Boy, was I wrong…
Ciao,
Angela