“I Learned to Become Who I Want to Be”
In 2020 I had lived in Chicago for sixteen years after leaving my childhood home in the mountains of east Tennessee. Prior to the pandemic I believed that my life was unlikely to change too terribly much in the coming years. I owned a cafe that in February of 2020 seemed poised to really start taking off in its third year, my family was doing well, and I had made peace with the idea of being a person who had not gone to college. Granted I wanted to attend college, but it always got pushed aside or my full energy was needed for other parts of my life. When I was 18, my family could not afford to help me pay for college, so I got a job at a bookstore instead. My wife, Katy, who works in Student Affairs at DePaul, encouraged me and made numerous offers of help, but I almost clung to the idea of myself as a hardworking, under-educated southerner.
But then 2020 brought the chaos, fear, and grief of the Covid-19 outbreak. At the onset of the pandemic, Katy and I closed the café we owned for 2 months hoping to help “flatten the curve.” She was working many hours to help transition the new student orientation process to an online platform. I was building furniture we didn’t really need out of found wood and reading David Copperfield to our cats. We had started to go on weekly hikes around the Chicago area, and on one I mentioned maybe wanting to take a class in something somewhere to distract me. Katy suggested that I try to finish my degree. After years of resisting and fearing failure, I decided that she was right.
So, I applied and was admitted, went through transfer orientation, and registered for classes. I began my journey as a full-time undergraduate student in history! In my first few quarters, all of the classes were online asynchronous and/or on Zoom. As an older, non-traditional student that format worked really well for me. The age difference did not matter as much as I had feared, and I began to feel that I could do it. In the fall of 2021, I applied for the Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar after encouragement from one of my history professors.
I got accepted into the program which welcomes students from four local universities to the Newberry Library where students get to work on original research projects. Again, I was very aware of the age difference between me and my peers, but after the first class, it didn’t matter really. We were all enthusiastically engaged in work that we were passionate about and excited to help each other create something special. The professors were incredible and wonderfully encouraging. I got to work with primary sources that you can touch! As a history student – it was electrifying.
The next year, I decided to take one more risk. I applied for a study abroad class. It was a spring quarter class that would culminate in a 2-week trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland in June. Belfast had long been one of the places I was most fascinated by and a place whose history compelled me to keep trying to ask better questions. It was a graduate Study Abroad program, so as an undergraduate I had to apply for permission and get approval from the program and the professor. In this instance, I think my age helped me! The trip was not just a highlight of my time at DePaul University, but also of my life. We met politicians, activists, and people like me who were still figuring things out for themselves. We toured Stormont, City Hall, and the Giant’s Causeway. The trip was tremendously fun and solidified my interest in Northern Ireland and the Irish Diaspora. I had an area of specialty as an historian!
Because of the timing, I completed my degree and graduated after fall quarter 2023. It has been through writing this that I have decided to walk at commencement in the spring. At first, I didn’t think that it was a big deal and wanted to avoid the fanfare, but I realized how proud I am of my time as an undergraduate at DePaul. And I am proud of what I can now do and what I believe about myself that I did not in 2020.
I am currently in my first quarter as a graduate student in history. Going back to school was a bit scary, but it was worth it. I learned an incredible amount, but some of the truly great lessons were gleaned from confronting that scary stuff and taking chances. It wasn’t too late for me. I did not have to limit myself to what circumstances may have dictated who I am. At DePaul, I learned to become who I want to be.
~Sarah