When the Goal Matters More Than the Journey

I don’t usually get very personal in this space, but as I prepare to enter the final semester of my graduate program, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it has taken to get here. I’m 50 years old, a grandmother, and a full-time employee in a high-stakes leadership role. I have a family, a career, clients, responsibilities, and a life that does not particularly care whether I have a paper due Sunday night. Somehow, in the middle of all of that, I have made it to my final semester. I honestly can’t believe it.

The interesting thing is that the academic work itself hasn’t necessarily been the hardest part. I already have a master’s degree, and I came into this program knowing that I could handle graduate-level work. What I didn’t fully anticipate was how different it would feel to return to school at this point in my life and career. I am not the same person I was when I earned my first graduate degree. I came back to the classroom with decades of professional experience, years of leadership, and a very different understanding of how people, organizations, and systems actually work.

That experience has been both an asset and, at times, a challenge. There have been moments when something being taught in the classroom has felt very different from what I know happens in practice. There have also been times when, based on my professional background, I genuinely felt that I had more practical experience in a particular area than the person teaching me. I say that humbly, because I don’t believe learning has to be hierarchical. Someone does not have to know more than I do about everything in order to teach me something. Still, adjusting to being evaluated and instructed after spending so many years being the person responsible for leading, supervising, developing programs, and making decisions has required a level of humility that I didn’t necessarily expect.

One of the promises I made to myself when I started this program was that I would try not to become bitter or cynical in the classroom. That may sound dramatic, but anyone who has spent enough years working within complicated systems probably understands what I mean. Experience teaches you that what looks great in theory can become very different once budgets, policies, personalities, politics, staffing shortages, competing priorities, and actual human beings enter the equation. It can be difficult to sit quietly while discussing how something should work when you have spent years dealing with how it actually works.

There were certainly times when I wanted to say, “That sounds wonderful, but that is not how this is going to go in real life.” Sometimes I did say it. Other times, I had to remind myself that I did not return to school to demonstrate everything I already knew. I came back because there was something else I wanted to learn and something else I wanted to accomplish. If I allowed my experience to convince me that there was nothing left for anyone to teach me, then all that experience would become a limitation rather than a strength.

That realization has probably been one of the more meaningful parts of this journey. Being teachable does not require me to pretend that I don’t know what I know. I don’t have to minimize my professional experience to make room for someone else’s expertise. At the same time, experience does not make me automatically right. I can question something and still listen. I can disagree and remain curious. I can recognize that a professor may not have encountered some of the situations I have professionally while also recognizing that they may offer a perspective, theory, or clinical framework that I have not considered before.

I have also had to accept that school is simply different now than it was when I earned my first master’s degree. Some of those differences have been wonderful, and others have tested every ounce of patience I possess. Rather than spending too much energy comparing the two experiences, I eventually decided to focus on the outcome. I know why I came back. I know what I am working toward. Not every class has to transform me, not every assignment has to feel meaningful, and not every part of the process has to make sense to me for the larger goal to still matter.

There have been plenty of moments when I was tired and frustrated. There were evenings when I finished a demanding workday and still had schoolwork waiting for me. There were weekends when I would have preferred to do almost anything other than open my laptop. Meanwhile, family responsibilities continued, work continued, and life continued. Graduate school did not arrive in a neat little space that had been cleared specifically for it. I had to fit it into a life that was already very full.

Now, as I look toward this final semester, I am allowing myself to appreciate what it took to get here. I am proud that I stayed with it, but I am equally appreciative of what the experience has taught me about being willing to occupy different roles at the same time. I can be an experienced professional and a student. I can be confident in what I know and curious about what I don’t. I can bring decades of experience into a classroom without allowing that experience to close me off from learning.

Maybe that is the lesson I didn’t know I was signing up for. Growth at this stage of life hasn’t required me to start over or become someone completely different. It has required me to make room for something new alongside everything I have already learned and become.

I still have one semester to go, so I’m not celebrating at the finish line just yet. But I can finally see it from here. And after everything it took to get to this point, that feels pretty damn good.