I have today registered to embark on the final year of a degree course in Medicine. With the degree I studied before this one in which I lost a year due to my health, it will be nearly 10 years next July since I set out on this journey. I would not say it is any easier or harder studying in my fifth decade of life. What I can say is that it has to be approached in a rather different way.
This or any other degree course takes no account of a family at home so I have been incredibly lucky to have such understanding people behind me. All this seems a million miles away from my previous career in Sales Management and a trillion miles away from my less than impressive A level grades of DDE in 1987. I am sure though that both I and the world I inhabit are a lot different to how they were in 1987. Gone is the precociousness of youth. That is a feature of youth which we tend to leave behind as life starts to deal with us. Mine was left behind a long time ago.
In returning to study for the last decade I am sure I have learned far more about myself than the subjects in which I have become immersed. I have also learned the truth of the awful cliche that you're never to old to be learning. In a sense, we never stop learning irrespective of whether we happen to return to main stream education. As the final furlong approaches, I remain confident of the decision I took in 2004 and look forward to being able to finally put something back twelve months hence.
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