tinyE: I went back to college briefly at 26. Though unexpected medical problems made me drop out, I would imagine I was close to leaving anyway because of the age gap, and that makes me feel like a real asshole. I pride myself on being a child but here I was only 26 feeling totally alienated by some 18 year olds. That was 10 years ago and every once in a while someone will hit me up to go back and get those last 12 credits for my BA but all I need do is think about being surrounded by all those young perky kids and I start to feel ill.
Haha. Darn kids, won't stay off your lawn! Yeah they can be sort of... annoying. I imagine it's going to be even worse for them when they're my age, because the 20 year olds then will have been the generation that grew up entirely on smartphones and tablets.
I'm actually thinking about dropping out also even though I'm so close to being done. Financially it's destroying me. And I'm not even just talking about the tuition, but the lack of being able to find proper work while in school is making it rough. Some months I don't even have enough money to buy food. I dealt with it for a while and it was fine, but I'm pretty much out of my tolerance for it. Thanks to the recession, it's become impossible to find employers that are willing to work around school schedules. I've drained my savings and I sold off everything I don't have to have. I'm actually getting ready to sell my laptop for half of what I paid for it for extra cash.
It would be easier if I was majoring in anything other than physics, probably. Not only is physics a demanding curriculum (example: we have lab reports due every work that take about 10 hours to complete. That's 10 hours a week needed outside of the classroom just for ONE CLASS), but it's an extremely small department since very few students major in physics, so their class offerings are very limited. It's not uncommon to have class in the morning and have to go back in the evening on that same day for another class. How are you supposed to find work with a schedule like that? There's hardly any work available as it is in this economy anyways, I guess.