As a young girl, my family never really talked about college or bachelors degrees. It was just assumed that when you became an adult you went to work. My father was from a large southern family with few college grads and my mother from a more educated family where her mother was an RN and all the children went to college and completed bachelor’s degrees. So, as a small town girl, who started her married family life young, college was a fantasy, a what-if, definitely not a need. Or, so I thought.

Then I hit the job market and it didn’t take long working various factory, food service and retail jobs to decide that college was a necessity and not a distant dream. My first step was to go to a few local colleges and see what was needed to enroll. Less painless than I had feared, the entrance exams quickly led to perusing course schedules and setting up meetings with advisors.

Money was an object, and unlike today, there were not as many financing options and programs available to working, non-traditional students. Out came the credit cards and I limited my classes to those that would provide immediate, job enhancing skills paying off each semester as I went. Taking one to three classes a semester was tough, especially with a husband, a son and a job, but I knew to better myself and my family, I had to do it.

Thankfully, semesters don’t last the entire year, and I quickly learned to manage my time with a family/assignment/work white board and a few late nights. Every year was scheduled around class schedules, and family vacations were so much more meaningful at the end of the semester. Within 4 short years of starting my bachelor’s degree, I had acquired the knowledge and skills to launch my career in accounting. Pursuing my degree greatly increased my income and my family’s standard of living.

Along the way, my classes, professors and other students exposed me to greater understanding of the world around. I knew that college would train me in my chosen field of accounting, what I didn’t realize was that getting a bachelor’s degree would also broaden my horizons and give me the opportunity to learn things in depth.

By the time I started the final push to complete my lifelong goal of a bachelor’s degree, accelerated and online university programs were readily available, as were many more financing options.

The road was not short, nor was it easy, but the day I graduated with my bachelor’s degree was one of the happiest, and was the most self-satisfying, days of my life.

The decision to return to school was not an easy one. My husband and I went back and forth over it for weeks. There were so many questions we had to answer — who will take care of the house? Will we have enough money to live on? Who will handle all of the day-to-day chores that need to be done?

But the most important questions we faced concerned our kids. How would they respond to having both parents out of the home all day? Is it right to let them come home to an empty house? How would we keep up with their lives: their schoolwork, their friendships, their extracurricular activities.

Deciding to Go Back to School with Kids
In the end, we decided to lay out all of the responsibilities that we’d have to start sharing if I was to return to University. And we didn’t merely divide them between my husband and myself: the kids would have to start taking more care of their rooms, helping to cook meals, and even doing their own laundry. My going back to school would require help from the whole family.

We reasoned that my going back to school would bring a lot of benefits to the family, and so everyone should pitch in to make the transition easier. First of all, I’ve always regretted not finishing college. But dropping out seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and I don’t blame myself for making the decision.

What I realized, though, is that with my husband’s career beginning to take shape and my kids in junior high, “housewife” wasn’t a full-time job anymore. With a degree, I’d have the freedom and flexibility to start a career of my own by the time the kids were in high school. That’s something I’ve always dreamed of, and it seemed silly to not take advantage of the timing.

The Challenges of Raising Kids While in College
I won’t lie: going to school full time with two children has not been easy. Every week presents a new set of challenges and compromises that have to be made — and I’m usually the one that has to make them. At the same time, though, returning to school has been the most rewarding experience of my life, and I’m sure my children will appreciate the sacrifice they’re making when they’re go off to college.