Some 13 years ago, I graduated from Ohio State with my doctorate. After some fitful attempts to remain employed in my field – including a stint doing research and teaching at OSU – I chose to stay at home with my three children. This choice drove my interests toward new vistas and activities that culminated in my electing to return to grad school. I am now back with my fellow Buckeyes as a first-year master’s student in the College of Public Health. I was once a young doctoral student; now I’m an “older returning” master’s student.

Who am I?

I sit next to you on the bus and in class. I peruse the good ol’ Lantern. My backpack holds the usual grad-student stuff, although I’ve upgraded to lugging a notebook computer too, which is a nice change from the bad old days. I’m next to you in the computer lab. I’m really just part of the crowd.

But there are subtle differences. I’m almost always late because not only do I still have three kids, my long-distance remarriage makes me a de facto single mom. And I’m employed: I teach at Columbus State Community College. My students seem young enough to be my kids – as do you, my classmates. I never stop running.

I miss the old grad school days, not just because I miss making it to occasional concerts at Weigel Hall or exhibits at the Wexner. It’s not just going out for a beer or coffee or to Gallery Hop with classmates, or taking extra classes “just for fun” to expand my perspective. It’s not just watching friends’ final performances for the dance department, giving the extra touch of excellence to my papers and projects, hanging out, catching late-fall sunshine on the Oval, volunteering with community service projects, staying out all night, idly cruising High Street shops, hanging out in the bookstores, staying up all night to study, or anything.

Nah, what I miss is feeling normal.

What I miss is being able to talk to my fellow students. Others my age understand, and we readily strike up conversations with each other when we happily coincide in bus seating. One thing we agree on: Young people hold back. When you’re older, you’ll strike up conversations in public, too. And this is what we want to know: How do you talk to people with things in their ears; or people who are loudly sharing their intimacies with perfect strangers while shouting into their cell phones; or who won’t even acknowledge your presence, as if you were perhaps from Mars?

OK, it’s true: At my age, I could have given birth to you. But in the end I’m really just another student afraid to fail, unsure of the assignment, shy about speaking up, wondering if people think I’m weird, hoping for the occasional “Excellent!” on a paper to dilute the constant professorial critiques. And it’s also true that I do not use the word “Awesome!” and I do not IM or text. Online class materials blow me away, and I have a desperate acquaintance with the actual human librarian. I thought a flash drive had to do with the gears in my car, or perhaps James Bond’s. I kid you not.

But consider. In the twenty-some years between our ages, perhaps I have endured enough, learned enough, to have something genuinely unique to share that might add to your own education. I’m learning the same material you are, but I assure you it looks entirely different to me. Your perspective informs me and delights my intellectual need to understand the real world. Perhaps my perspective could enrich your world too. All I ask is that you take those things out of your ears … and perhaps we could have a conversation on the bus.

Lina Howison is a graduate student in public health. She can be reached at [email protected].