The I.D. Card

Most days, the green and blue laminated student I.D. from Chattahoochee Valley Community College remains tucked in my purse, almost forgotten.

But then there are those days when I need to be reminded that the work I do as a community college professor matters – that each of the students I work with during the course of the semester has a story, just like the ever-smiling woman on the student I.D. card.

That is when I pull out the I.D. card of my mother-in-law, look at her smiling, unchanged photo, her perfectly applied lipstick and her carefully shaped hair, and I remember all that her journey at a Phenix City, Ala. community college meant to her.

I remind myself of the stories she has told me about returning to school back in the late 1980s. She was in her late 40s at that point, divorced with three children and eager to make a new start for herself.

She learned not just how to turn on a computer, but how to use is. She struggled through classes in technology and algebra and along the way discovered she loved sketching and found the music of some of the great composers to be both soothing and inspiring.

Not long after the fall of 1990, despite all her hard work and academic success, my mother-in-law allowed a less than noble man to sidetrack her and she stopped short of receiving her degree.

Two decades later, believed to be in remission after spending a year in a grueling, ugly battle with esophagus cancer, her days at Chattahoochee Valley were still on her mind. She ordered the college catalog and copies of her transcript, and had selected the first courses she would take.

She called me, excited by her plans: “They told me I can still do this. I am going to get that degree. Some people may say that I am too old but I don’t care. I think it’s important.”

Before she could enroll, she discovered the cancer that had already battered her body had not only returned, but spread.

She was never able to finish her degree. But until her dying day, that shortcoming was one of her biggest regrets.

Every now and then, I see older students in my class. Early on, they often laugh nervously, as though they need to apologize for even being on the rolls.

“I’m older than the professor!” they sometimes announce, not so much meaning to question my authority or expertise, but just speaking out of their own discomfort.

They make jokes about how electricity wasn’t around when they were in high school. Or how the dinosaur they rode in on is standing at the ready in the parking lot.

But most of the time, after this initial discomfort, these same students excel. They ask questions that make me and their classmates think. They tell stories that make us all laugh – or cry. And they remind us all that learning is not something we do just to earn a piece of paper, but to build a better, more meaningful life.

And on those days when they do seem to be dragging – forgetting why they are there or not seeing all that they offer to their classmates, I quietly pull out Shirley’s I.D. card. And I tell them the story of her deepest regret.

And so, even two months after the end of her battle with cancer, Shirley is teaching people – helping to educate them.

I think she would like that …..

For more information on the work of community colleges to educate the nation’s over-50 learners, click here.