Quest for knowledge

Nothing about Rebecca Boostrom's daily routine seems out of the ordinary. She heads to class from her dorm room each weekday morning. Her evenings are filled with homework and law school applications. She stays up late at night. Knowing the importance of staying in shape, she often heads to the SRSC for a swim.\nBut there is one thing -- Boostrom is 62 years old. Known to fellow residents of Ashton-Johnston as "Grandma," she finds a way to keep up with the pace of students one-third her age.\n"It's kind of inspiring to see someone going into a non-traditional living experience to continue their education and not seem to care that everyone else is younger," said sophomore Jen Leitner, an Ashton-Johnston resident.\nBoostrom's sentiments are those of any college student.\n"It doesn't seem like there's enough time in a day," she said of her schedule.\nBoostrom is pursuing a bachelor's degree in French literature. The native of Mount Vernon, Ind., already knocked her first bachelor's degree out of the way a while ago, graduating from Saint Louis University in 1963 with an English degree.\nAfter getting her master's degree, she spent the better part of 20 years teaching anywhere and everywhere. Some of it was spent across the Midwest, as she taught in Chicago, Evansville, Ind., and Owensboro, Ky. She also taught English overseas in Colombia and China.\nAmong her favorite travel memories is riding the Trans-Siberia Railway through the far-eastern edge of Russia all the way into Poland.\nThen, in 1987, when she was involved in a court case over a property dispute, Boostrom decided she should learn more about the law herself. She began studying business law at IU. But one subject was not enough to whet her appetite for knowledge.\nBoostrom took some economics classes and bounced back and forth between that and business. Finally, she settled on French and picked up another bachelor's degree. She hopes that degree, along with the one on which she is currently working, will give her enough fluency to teach international law overseas. \n"I was a little afraid to go to a foreign country and not know what I was doing," Boostrom said.\nShe has spent the past two years studying in Canada, where she lived in a dormitory. She thought well enough of the experience to try it again when she came back to IU for her final year of study before heading to law school. Boostrom chose to live in Ashton-Johnston because it has a higher GPA requirement for its residents.\nBoostrom said the accommodations at IU are a bit noisier than they were in Canada. Since she can't get to sleep early at night, she just takes a nap late in the afternoon and stays up late like everyone else.\n"That's dorm life, I guess," she said.\nThough she interacts with and talks to the students with whom she lives, Boostrom said it is harder to get to know someone so much younger than herself, so her friends are mostly post-doctoral students.\nIn addition to her school work, Boostrom practices her French every week at the French Conversation Club. She has also applied to six law schools that have an emphasis in international law.\nIU wasn't one of the schools that she applied to, so she does know that she will be somewhere new next year. But as long as she is learning, location doesn't matter, she said.\n"Each time I learn something, I can teach it to someone else."\n-- Contact senior writer Alex Hickey at ahickey@indiana.edu.