Back to school

It's 12:30 p.m. and Jeff Cannon walks out the doors of Ernie Pyle Hall into the bright sunshine. He is finished with class for the day, but he doesn't turn toward the Union to grab a burger and discuss last night's parties with his classmates. Nor does he head back to the dorms to add to an MP3 collection and watch reruns of the "Real World."\nInstead, he heads to a car just outside the Journalism School where Cannon's wife, Angie, and two daughters, 3-year-old Emma and 8-month-old Abby, wait to greet him after a day at school. \nThis reception may be vastly different from the typical after-class activities of his fellow students, but for Cannon, 43, there's "not a better feeling than coming out of class to hear my daughter say, 'Daddy, daddy!'"\nCannon is one of a small number of adult students pursuing an undergraduate degree at Indiana University Bloomington. Out of a student population of almost 30,000 undergraduates, only 547 are currently over the age of 30.\nWhy do so few adults take advantage of the opportunity of a university education? Besides the obvious financial impact, going back to school requires a life change many adults aren't ready to take. \n"It takes a lot of courage and sacrifice," Cannon said. "You have to say, 'So much for this lifestyle that I've enjoyed for 20 years -- I'm going to go back and set something straight.'" \nEach adult student's decision to enroll in the University is unique and personal. Some, like Cannon, come to atone for a past neglect. \n41-year-old Glenda O'Neill, for example, is a part-time student and full-time IU employee at the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. \nShe enrolled in classes "to achieve a goal that I put on hold when I decided to get married and have children twenty years ago," she said. \nO'Neill is now on her way to a BA in General Studies and a certificate from the Kelly School of Business. \nOther adults come to be retrained specifically in a new field, sometimes even being paid by their employer to receive the education.\nWhatever their reasons, adult students arrive at school recognizably more mature than their fellow students. \n"When you go back to school in my situation, you are surrounded by people who could be your own children," said John Rainey, 52, who came to IU last January to finish the one semester he needed to obtain a Political Science degree. \nThis age gap can sometimes present feelings of awkwardness, from both the younger and older students. \n"There are still some fellow students who still don't know what to make of me," said 40-year-old nursing student Diane Scott. "I don't think of myself as their mom, because my children are still young. I naturally feel like a friend, but I know not all of my classmates feel the same way towards me." \nCannon agreed, he said he relates well to his classmates but can't tell if it's reciprocated.\n"I think I talk to my classmates as peers," Cannon said. "But I don't think they think so, because it's hard to view somebody who looks and sounds more like your friend's dad as a peer." \nOther adult students don't feel the generation gap is as much of an issue, but most admit to initial feelings of awkwardness. On the whole, they try to move past these feelings and enjoy interaction with their fellow students. \nIn addition to being significantly younger, today's generation of college students may even be smarter than their adult counterparts. Research published by political science professor James R. Flynn in the 1980s suggested that IQ scores have been increasing each generation for over 50 years. \nRainey said when he walked into his first class at IU he was "very aware" of this phenomenon, commonly called the Flynn Effect. \nIn an attempt to familiarize students with one another, his professor had the class play a game in which students had to remember the names of each of their fellow classmates. \n"My professor basically proved the Flynn Effect to me," Rainey said. "I was totally astonished when they went around this room of 25 people and almost everybody got everyone else's name. I got about six! That was my very first experience in school after 30 years and it knocked me down a few notches, but I got over it." \nWhile younger college students may have a small advantage in IQ scores, adult students note unique benefits to obtaining a college education at this time in their lives. \n"You bring a lot in the door with you, and it's helpful because the education resonates on so many levels," Cannon said. "There's hardly a thing that a professor ever says that you don't have some life experience with. It's wonderful; it's so much more meaningful now." \nIn addition to enjoying this greater significance in their education, several adult students also take pleasure in the newfound ease with which they acquire good grades. Their increased life experience, along with a renewed desire to learn cause improved academic performance for many adult students. \nO'Neill said that as an adult student, it is now easier for her to form relationships with professors on a one-on-one basis. This approach helps further her educational growth in another manner unique to the adult student's experience.\nRainey, on the other hand, feels that being an adult student hinders his chances in becoming mentored by his professors. An important part of an undergraduate education is this mentor/mentee relationship between students and teachers, but for Rainey, this chance has not presented itself. \n"None of my professors are at all interested in mentoring me because they see me as being somewhat on their age level," Rainey said.\nJust what is it like being the same age as your professors? Despite the awkwardness of occasionally being taught by Assistant Instructors that could almost pass for their children, many adult students are very positive about the experience. \n"There's nothing more comfortable to me than learning from a peer, and I think that's true of most of us," Cannon said. "I now attach no authoritarian models to my teachers. When I was a kid, that's what they were -- they were authority figures. Now, they're just teachers."\nClaude Cookman, IU associate professor of Journalism, said he knows what it's like to be in both positions. Not only has he taught a number of adult students over the years, but he's been one as well. When he began his Ph.D. studies at Princeton University at age 43, his first professor was five years his junior and his closest classmate was born the year he graduated from high school. \n\"None of this seemed to make any difference," Cookman said. "We all had the attitude that it was what was in our minds that mattered -- not our chronological age or how young or old we looked." \nCookman said he tries to manifest this philosophy in the classroom and gives adult students the same attention and respect that he does their younger counterparts. He said he is always happy to see them in his classes because they offer useful perspectives to their younger classmates. \n"In short, diversity in age is just as valuable to a class as diversity in race, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation," Cookman said.\nIt may be easy to confuse adult students with their teachers when seen around campus, but this small group of undergraduates would like to be seen for what they are: Not mother and father figures intruding on an experience primarily consumed by the young, but simply fellow classmates with a few more years of experience. \n"I would love for the younger students to challenge themselves to engage the older students like peers," Cannon said. \nThough he may be 20 years older than the average IU student and may look forward to seeing his 3-year-old daughter after class instead of heading back to the dorms, Cannon still has the same goal -- to obtain an education. That is what it means to be a student, no matter what your age, he said.