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Why "back to school" means something entirely different for the adult student


Back in August, when we were being inundated with television, radio, and internet ads for back to school madness, I was in the midst of meeting with prospective, new APPEAL students here on campus.  After a quiet stretch in July, it made sense that new students would make their way to our offices on the ground level of Reid Castle.  Sometime in August, we all seem flip that switch from lazy summer mode to productive, school mode, regardless of our age and regardless of whether or not we are going back to school.  It’s just something that is ingrained in all of us as we have been conditioned and programmed from a young age to equate August (despite the oppressive heat and humidity) with back to school.

Even with all of that programming and conditioning, though, adult students may have a different approach to back to school.  Many of those aforementioned prospective APPEAL students from August completed the application process and found themselves back to school, in an accelerated seven-week term that began the last week in August.  For some, though, they had too much going on to get all of their ducks in a row for the first half of the fall.  I think of one woman in particular, who was ready to go back to school after not having attended a college course for years. But she was facing one major commitment: she had to get her young daughter ready to go off to college. For this reason, she had to wait, but is hopeful to start in October. 

This isn’t unusual, and it is in fact one of the reasons why programs such as Manahattanville’s APPEAL program offer accelerated terms all throughout the year.  This way, the busy adult student is never far off from a new term beginning.  And accelerated terms typically fit the adult student’s style of learning better. Rather than committing to a class that means twice a week for a shorter period of time throughout fifteen weeks, an accelerated seven-week course allows the adult student to spend a longer amount of time in class once a week, but to earn the three credits in only seven weeks. In doing this, they actually get to better know their instructor and classmates (let’s face it- if you spend four hours once a week in a small room, you’ll certainly get to know the others in the room!)

There’s no denying that it is very much autumn as I write this.  The days are shorter, the nights cooler.  And for most ‘traditional’ students, the academic year is in full-swing and mid-terms are starting to appear on the horizon.  But for the adult student, it’s a whole different ballgame.  The idea of getting ready for ‘back to school’ can just as easily happen in August, October, or six months from now.

Jon DeBenedictis
Program Director

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