Life After Forty

Again a Cliche?

I am about to start on a Masters program and my friend visiting from Alaska carelessly said “Oh, all my divorced mom friends are getting masters in counseling degrees right now, it seems the in thing to do when you get to be our age”. Sigh… apparently I am having a second go ’round as a cliche. Most of you know the whole “last one to know” story of my divorce. But I honestly thought this decision was creative and forward thinking.  I really believe that with my personality and given the right academic tools I will make a good counselor. Now I am doubting myself. Are there a multitude of over forty, divorcees who believe this is the case? Am I joining the ranks of middle aged women who have an overdeveloped opinion that they (we) are special enough to be able to help others due to their (our) unique life experience ? Fudge. But what else? I am going to have to work well into my sixties unless I get married to someone with a great retirement plan. Given my propensities – I certainly cannot count on that!  And I cannot choose a career path that requires the use of my body (that reads funny, I didn’t mean I was considering prostitution, I meant things like lifting or cleaning or building. You folks have dirty minds). Anyway, my undergraduate degree is in Human Services which includes lots of counseling type work and I truly did enjoy it. I found that the more I learned the more there was to learn regarding social systems and cultures. Effective counselors know a lot about how one operates within the confines of a particular system.

I am not going to research the percentage of women – just like me – who are flooding this field. I don’t want to know. When I signed in to my Master”s Program online sight and “met” the others in my class I got a clear sense that many of my classmates are fresh from college. For some unexplained reason a majority of folks wrote about their dogs in their introduction. Apparently thinking of your dog as your child is considered a selling point. I think only people without children believe this but you never know. I nearly put down that I share custody of a dog but then I decided that would be disingenuous which is not how I want to think of myself. I do actually share custody of a dog though in case you thought I might be lying to fit in.

So school starts in a few days and I am a bit unsettled about it. I did not LOVE school. EVER. I especially did not love college. I went to several schools and never really felt I was learning anything. I thought of the whole thing as a sort of game: in order to get a good job you need a degree. The degree can be in just about anything. Then you have the degree and you get to join the degree club. Then they give you the job. The reality was that some students worked hard and put a lot of effort into learning and some did the bare minimum, hardly cracking a book and rarely could the teachers tell the difference.  I found that I worked hard when I was interested and faked it when I wasn’t (which was most of the time).  The degree has opened a few doors, I admit, but other than learning how to cram I am not sure I learned enough to justify the expense.

Here I am again. This time I have high hopes that I will learn. Simply learn. I would love to write a book about my family’s experience “unplugging” the kids from electronic games but I have been waiting to do some research regarding how this stuff affects my kids at different ages and stages of development. I would like some insight into human development so that I can understand my family and friends better. And myself. I plan on looking honestly at myself. Maybe I can figure out how not to become a cliche. You never know…