Chapman University at 40: Going Back to School

The first day at Chapman, I parked my truck next to a row of brand-new cars that cost more than my annual salary. I was twice the age of most students and carrying a past that none of them could imagine.

Why Go Back?

By 2001, I’d been working in the legal field for eight years. I was competent, experienced, and constantly overlooked for advancement because I didn’t have a degree. The ceiling was real and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Going back to school wasn’t about proving something to the world. It was about proving something to myself — that the person I used to be didn’t get to define the person I could become.

The Math Didn’t Add Up

Full-time job. Full course load. Child support payments that consumed a third of my income through wage garnishment. There was no financial cushion. No safety net. Some semesters I wasn’t sure I could afford textbooks.

The Experience

Being the Old Guy

At 40, you’re invisible in a college classroom — or you’re a curiosity. Professors treated me like any other student. Classmates occasionally asked for life advice, not realizing how complicated my answers would be.

The generational gap was real but not insurmountable. What surprised me was how much the younger students’ energy and optimism recharged my own motivation.

What Surprised Me

I was a better student at 40 than I ever would have been at 20. Life experience made abstract concepts concrete. Business ethics classes hit different when you’ve seen the consequences of having none. Criminal justice courses read like autobiography.

The Saddleback Foundation

I’d earned my A.A. from Saddleback College in 1999, which was the first proof that I could do this. That degree — as modest as it sounds — broke the psychological barrier. If I could get through community college while working full-time and paying support, Chapman was just more of the same. Harder, but the same principle.

Graduation Day

Walking across that stage in 2005 was twelve years in the making — counting from when I started my legal career in 1993. No one in my family had a college degree. No one in my former life would have believed it possible.

The degree itself opened doors. But the discipline required to earn it — that changed who I was at a fundamental level. It proved that reinvention isn’t a moment. It’s a decade of showing up when quitting would be easier.