{"id":48755,"date":"2019-02-09T15:04:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T22:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/?p=48755"},"modified":"2021-02-11T22:17:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T05:17:23","slug":"the-struggle-for-an-education-is-real-mature-students-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/2019\/02\/09\/the-struggle-for-an-education-is-real-mature-students-say\/","title":{"rendered":"The struggle for an education is real, mature students say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ready for a challenge: <\/strong>Maureen Dockery, in the Stan Grad building at SAIT on Jan. 16. Dockery, 49, is a third-year accounting student and a head of the Mature Students Club. (Photo by Katherine Puhl\/The Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

W<\/span>hen it comes to continuing education, some people might experience more stress than others\u00a0because of commitments they face outside of school.<\/p>\n

T<\/span>hat can be especially true for mature students.<\/p>\n

According to Alberta Education, a mature student is anyone who waited at least a few years\u00a0before continuing their education after finishing high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnically, many students may be mature students, but whether you identify as a mature\u00a0student is different,\u201d said Maureen Dockery, 49, the head of the Mature Students Club at SAIT.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who identify as mature students are likely to be married, have mortgages, full-time jobs,\u00a0kids and all sorts of other commitments outside of school, as opposed to someone who just got\u00a0out of high school.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mature Students Club was established in 2016 to provide support for students who were\u00a0struggling with fitting in to an educational system after being away for a while.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur club is different from other clubs,\u201d said Dockery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t require our members to commit to anything, as they already lead busy lives. We use\u00a0our Facebook group simply to let people know that they are not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some students have a better experience with fitting in to a younger demographic, others can have a hard time.<\/p>\n

Dockery said she has known some people who were on the verge of being homeless, but\u00a0thankfully, with the support from people in the group they were able to find resources at SAIT\u00a0that were life changing.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in the third year of my four-year program, I have gotten used to this environment.<\/p>\n

“However, I remember struggling with completing group work in class, because people in the younger\u00a0demographic tend to stick to their own groups,\u201d said Dockery.<\/p>\n

Fitting into an educational system might be harder for people with more commitments outside of\u00a0school, but SAIT provides resources available to all students to help them succeed, said Jerry\u00a0Rollick, learning coach for apprentices at SAIT.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can see how there could be a sense of disconnection in the classroom if there is a significant\u00a0age difference involved,\u201d said Rollick.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether you are the oldest in the classroom or the youngest, we all have a responsibility to get\u00a0to know each other and seek out commonalities while showing respect to one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is amazing what we can learn from one another by setting prejudgments aside,\u201d said Rollick.<\/p>\n

Learner Services provides resources, tutoring, and essential strategies for all students. Rollick\u00a0said if he had known about the Mature Students Club, he would have promoted it to more\u00a0students who felt disconnected and needed a friendly face.<\/p>\n

Some of most useful resources on campus, according to mature students at SAIT, are the\u00a0employment services.<\/p>\n

\u201cI struggled with being the oldest and the only woman in my group,\u201d said Yvonne Cottrell-Lundeen, 43, a second-year student in the Power Engineering program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hoping to see more meetups in the Mature Students Club to find some friendly faces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cotrell-Lundeen said finding a new career at her age was essential for supporting her family, and\u00a0even though she sometimes wishes that there was more gender and age diversity in her industry,\u00a0she feels confident in becoming successful thanks to all the resources available at SAIT.<\/p>\n

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Never Too Old to Learn: <\/strong>Yvonne Cottrell-Lundeen, in SAIT’s Senator Burns building, on Jan. 28. Cottrell-Lundeen, 43, is a second year power engineering student. She decided to get a new career after working as a massage therapist for 23 years. (Photo by Katherine Puhl\/The Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to continuing education, some people might experience more stress than others\u00a0because of commitments they face outside of school. That can be especially true for mature students. According to Alberta Education, a mature [ READ MORE ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":48761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ef_editorial_meta_text_assignment-slug":"S1 Mature Students at SAIT KP","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-campus-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48755"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48979,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48755\/revisions\/48979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saitjournalism.ca\/thepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}