Kristy Randle stepped out of bed at five in the morning and found herself standing in about a foot of water. Panicked, Randle woke up her husband, and they quickly set to work, bailing water with 16-ounce cups and looking for the cause of the leak.
“We opened the door to the bathroom and found water flowing like a waterfall over the counter from the sink,” Randle said. “We had blown a valve.”
They were going to sink, and so were her dreams for a degree, Randle thought.
Randle lives with her husband and 15-year-old son on a boat five days a week docked in Hide-A-Way Harbor in Tuscaloosa. At 42 years old, she is not your typical college student.
“It always makes things interesting when you are having to call your professors and say, ‘I am not going to be in class because I am trying to keep my boat from sinking,’” Randle said. “I think it’s a little hard for them to wrap their minds around the fact that we live on a boat.”
But to the relief of both Randle and her husband, they were able to replace the valve and get the water out of the boat.
Randle is a non-traditional student at the University, pursuing degrees in English and journalism. She lives on a boat because she and her husband could not afford to pay the mortgage on their house in Springville, Ala., their hometown, and pay rent for an apartment in Tuscaloosa where Randle, her husband and her son attend school.
UA spokeswoman Cathy Andreen said the University has not attempted to formally define what exactly defines a non-traditional student, and The National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, also acknowledges that there is no precise definition for a non-traditional student, but suggests that part-time status and age are common elements. Andreen said the simplest criteria to track [at the University] are undergraduate students age 25 or older.
A non-traditional student could be any student part-time or full-time who falls into any of the following categories: has delayed enrollment, does not have a high school diploma, has dependents other than a spouse or works full-time while enrolled in school.
According to University records, there were 2,323 students older than 25 at the University in 2012, making up 8.3 percent of the total student population. Randle and her husband are two of those 2,323. Both are full-time students at the University with aspirations to earn not only their bachelor’s degrees, but their master’s and Ph.D.’s as well.
Cynthia Blake is also one of the 2,323 students. Blake transferred to the University in the fall of 2011 from a community college. She is 30 years old and plans to graduate in December 2013 with a degree in journalism.
“I always wanted to go back to school,” Blake said. “I dropped out of high school because I thought I knew everything and got my GED. I worked for the next 10 or 12 years in different restaurants, and I wanted a degree because I did not like what I was doing.”
Blake faced various challenges returning to school, but she said the hardest thing was balancing school and her home. She said her family is very encouraging, though.
“I married a man with two special needs sons, and all three of them are very supportive, but it’s hard,” she said. “If I am here, I am thinking about the laundry. If I am at home, I am thinking about stuff that needs to be done for here.”
But Blake said she has enjoyed this experience as well.
“This is the first thing I have done that is completely selfish,” she said. “I could have continued working, and we would have been fine, but I wanted to do something different. So this is my thing. And the pride of knowing I am accomplishing something is huge too.”
Returning to school has brought ups and downs for Randle as well. She said there have been great sacrifices, but the reward has been great also.
For 20 years, Randle worked as a successful pastry chef and restaurant manager until she had to have carpel tunnel surgery. Although the surgery was successful, she no longer had good function of her hand. Her husband had already taken early retirement and returned to school, and in 2009, Randle decided to do the same.
Another part of what motivated Randle to go back to school was her son.
“I can’t rightfully bellyache at him about going to college without going back to school myself and completing my degree,” she said.
Her hard work in school has paid off. Randle has had the opportunity to do graduate-level research at the University under the direction of Dr. Jennifer Greer and supported by the McNair Scholars Program. Her research has been in the area of media framing in campus newspapers. She is the first undergraduate to actually perform research, to present at research conferences and to be published. Randle’s research will be published in the McNair Scholars Journal and is under review for possible publication in the National Association of American Studies Journal.
But returning to school has resulted in many sacrifices for Randle and her family as well.
“Now I am just really tired because I have been burning the candle at both ends,” Randle said. “My family took our first vacation in four years, and I think I did more schoolwork than I did hiking.”
Financially, there is also the challenge of juggling the bills to pay for school, and then taking care of her family.
“The simple act of cooking dinner and having dinner as a family has been hard,” Randle said. “We live on a 35-foot boot. Everyone in my household is a full-time student. I have the 15 year old over here doing schoolwork, Gene is over there doing schoolwork and I am doing schoolwork, and it’s a sandwich and Ramen noodle night.”
But the Randles try to make Saturday night a family night when they are back at home in Springville, Ala.
“About a year ago, my fifteen year old said to me, ‘Mom, do you realize that we have eaten more processed foods since you have been back in college than we have my entire life?’ That’s the day I realized that I was kind of sucking as a mom,” Randle said. “So now we make it a point on Saturday nights when we go back to Springville, that the dining room gets cleaned off and Gene and I get in the kitchen and we have a really good sit down meal together. And because we are going so much during the week we don’t get to sit down and have conversations every night like we used to, but on Saturdays, we do.”
Another challenge non-traditional students can face is fitting in with their classmate, who are several years their junior.
“When I first started it was weird because I was in a classroom full of people my sister’s age and I was like okay what do I say to these people who are 10 years younger than me,” Randle said.
Blake said it’s easier in classes for her major.
“In my journalism classes I do better, but when I had classes outside my major and minors, it was kind of hard because we had less common ground,” she said.
Despite the age gap between herself and other students, Randle said she has found everyone in her classes so far to be great.
“The first couple of days of a new class are always awkward, but when you get a couple of weeks into classes and they’re asking me questions and I am asking them questions, and you cultivate a friendship,” she said.
Students who had classes with Randle said it was not uncomfortable to have someone older as a classmate. They agreed that Randle was hardworking and great to work with.
“I love the idea of people coming back to school, I think it’s very respectable,” Kassondra Marshall, a junior majoring in public relations, said. “I really enjoyed working with and getting to know Kristy. I admired her story and her attitude toward school. She inspired me to work harder and really want to understand how to write for our PR class.”
Laura Monroe, a senior majoring in journalism, also said Randle was inspiring to her, and Randle’s different perspective on life was beneficial when editing Monroe’s stories.
“Having Kristy in my class didn’t really change the way I experienced the course, so I wouldn’t say that it caused anything to be different,” Monroe said. “We worked together often during the class and edited each other’s papers a few times. She is a few years older than me and has a family of her own, but Kristy is just like every other student. She is here to get an education that will help her reach her dreams.”
Cassandra Nelson, a first year master’s student majoring in literature, said she admired non-traditional students for their work ethic and dedication to return to school.
“I think it’s great that they have the opportunity to go back to college and pursue their dreams and goals,” Nelson said. “Personally, I kind of admire them for going back to college at that stage in their lives. I know if I already had a steady job and a family, you could not pay me to go back to college. So, I think it’s really admirable that they are willing to work so hard to achieve their goals or dreams.”
Nelson also found it easy to get along with older students in her classes.
“Usually, because of their age and experience, they provided a different take and insight on things that the rest of the class never would have thought of,” she said.
Randle said it was sometimes funny to find herself the same age, or even older, than some of her professors.
“I have to catch myself,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember to call some of my professors who are younger than me Dr. or Mrs. And I signed up for Dr. Roberts’ ethics class last semester and had to drop it because I had too much other stuff going on with my research. And [Dr. Roberts] was like, ‘But I was really looking forward to having someone my own in age in a class for once!’”
Randle and Blake opted to return to campus and complete their degrees rather than pursuing one online, but the University does offer online options for adult students age 25 and older through the New College Life Track program.
“We serve students at a distance so they can finish up in their own time, and not be bound by semesters,” Ana Schuber, the Life Track program manager, said. “They only have to come to campus one time for orientation.”
Schuber said any other visits to campus would be optional. They offer weekend courses though for those who wish to have more interaction.
Currently Life Track has 300 to 350 students. Students in the program can pick an area of depth study such as, Literature, Art and Society, Science, Technology and Culture, Leadership Studies, Community Studies, as well as Self-Designed areas. Upon completion of the program, they earn a Bachelors of Science or a Bachelors of Arts from The University of Alabama.
For Alexis Barton, Life Track was a life-changing experience. Barton entered the program at age 25 in 2006. She graduated in May 2010 and said she appreciated the flexibility the program gave her.
“When you do something you think you can’t do, the beliefs you hold about your own abilities change,” she said. “Your dreams shift. Possibilities emerge that you didn’t see before. The supportive environment and the mentoring relationships I’ve benefited from helped me believe that a degree was not out of reach, and the freedom to explore scholarly research at my own pace deepened my intellectual curiosity.”
Barton currently works in Birmingham for SameChicDifferentDay.com, a popular blog she recently launched.
William Carter graduated from the University through Life Track at age 49 and went on to get his master’s degree.
“I got my masters in two years,” he said. “That tells me this is a worthwhile program.”
Online classes did not appeal to Blake, though, who prefers a classroom setting.
“I don’t do very well online because I don’t have enough discipline to do it,” Blake said. “I do much better in a classroom setting. If there is not someone standing over me saying ‘where is it?’ You are probably not going to get it.”
However, Randle said she loves online classes.
“If I could have finished both of my degrees degree online, I would have,” she said. “Where else can you get a study and get a degree in your pajamas drinking coffee?”
But Randle’s two areas of discipline were not offered online.
“I could have gone somewhere else I guess and gotten it through some ABC or XYZ University, but I wanted a meaningful education,” she said. “And that is what I am getting at Alabama.”
Leading in today’s Crimson White:
Gutierrez likely to miss next gymnastics meet
