Apply for Scholarships

Now that you have made the decision to return to school and get your degree, funding is your big
priority. I have found a good site to start a scholarship process. scholarship-search-tips/older-student-

I am not affiliated with these people at all, just thought it was a well presented site for money for non traditional students. A quick search around this site will give you an idea of where to start.
Financial Aid offices in your universities are one resource, but I have found hundreds of sites on the internet that are specific for us non trads. It is hard to weed out the bogus spammy scammy ones but you will quickly see the trends. If they want you to pay them to do your scholarship search, run away. There is plenty of free help online for this type of search.

I'll be posting some more sites that I feel are worth your time and effort here in a day or so. I am personally out of the running for financial aid due to a high income.....FAFSA just laughed at my application! More on this later as well. The best thing to do is start doing something. The new school year is upon us and we are already behind schedule.

An interesting book on how to blog

I'm trying to learn as much as possible about my new hobby of blogging. This program looks to have a great amount of information in it. Take a look

I'm officially a OSU BEAVER!

Found out yesterday from Oregon State Admissions that I have been officially accepted as a student! I am in a dual enrollment program with my local Linn Benton Community College. This type of program will save you all kinds of money in tuition for the lower level classes. I'm there because I need to get my math requirements out of the way....there is no way I would make it throught ALGEBRA in a 300 person lecture hall class! It is actually 35 years since I graduated from high school and this is really a big deal for me. Reaching Lifelong Goals is another site I have started and this really fits into that blog as well. Yay ME!

I found something that might be a possible program to look at. Check it out and let me know if you think it is for real. Sounds good to me, I'll post more about it later. Click Here!

How I became a History Major

Being a Non Traditional student is a different experience at college... When I was put out to pasture by my previous employer due to the economy, I quickly saw that the job market in Oregon was pretty poor. Especially if you are a 53 year old Shipping Clerk without a college degree. What better time to go to school and finish that long desired degree. I was a student at a community college in Salem, Oregon from 1978-1981, majoring in Business Administration. Thought back then that it would be my ticket to success...

Well, LIFE GETS IN THE WAY SOMETIMES! Going to school and working full time soon became problematic, something had to give... Well long story-short, I became a working stiff in jobs that were neither fulfilling nor challenging for the next 30 years!

So, in March of 2009, I made the decision to go back to school as an "older returning student". I just plugged in my Business Administration credits and thought that would be fine... My wife is a CPA and asked me one day - "do you really want to take Business Law, do you really want to study Business Statistics?" I had to take a long hard look at what would be available to a 58 year old MBA going up against some "kid" just beginning his career. A prospective employer would look at him and say "I can pay this kid less money, and get more years out of them"

My wife asked me, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

My first love has always been History. Particularly World War One Aviation. If I was to invest the next few years in college, why shouldn't I study what I love? Since I have made this change in course, I feel a new freedom and drive toward my goal of a degree. What do I want to be when I grow up? AN HISTORIAN!!

When people ask me what I do, my goal is to be able to tell them that I'm a noted WWI Historian and be able to back that up with the sheepskin to prove it.

How do you find money to fund your education?

Hello World! How can you ever hope to fund your college education in today's economic climate? If you are like me, an older student returning to college after 30 years of being in the workforce, this can be a scary endeavor! Of course, there are all sorts of scholarships and grants out there, but what if you don't qualify? I found that my situation did not lend itself to taking out a student loan. I'm a 53 year old "non-traditional student" (that's what they call us now...) and when I finish my degree, I would have a huge debt to the government loansharks and not that many years left in me to pay it off!

I have been looking into many different forms of home based income generation as
a funding source for my education. In this blog we will go on a journey together to explore what works and what does not. I will be doing some reviews of the programs I look at. Hopefully, this will help all of you in narrowing down some options for yourself.

I also will be posting any information about scholarships for older returning students that are out there as well. You can spend many hours just sifting through the sites that are out there. I hope that we can do this all together and teach each other what we are learning.

So check back with me often, I'm dead in the middle of some programs that should be earning me my tuition at Oregon State University. My dream is to finally get that elusive college degree that I have dreamed about all my life!