Unfinished Business: How My Mom Earned Her Degree at 68

Because it’s never too late to finish what you begin.

and

Apr 26, 2025

Lately, I’ve been writing about college—the admissions stress, the culture shifts, the ways it weighs on families today.

But there’s another college story I want to share.

One that reminds me what education can really be about: joy, curiosity, and finishing what you started, no matter how long it takes.

It’s my mom’s story.

And it’s best told in her own words.

My Long Journey to an English B.A.

(by Liz Bracken)

In the 1960s, when I was in high school, there was no question that I would be attending a four-year liberal arts college. At least, there was no question in the minds of my parents.

However, in third grade, I had discovered Cherry Ames books—the nurse equivalent to Nancy Drew mysteries—and I had different plans. I volunteered as a Red Cross Volunteen at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh during the summers. And when it came time to apply to colleges, I told my mother I wanted to go to nursing school.

“You can do better than that,” she said.

And that was the end of the discussion.

I went to the college visitations that came to my school. I visited some schools in Ohio. I really wanted to go to a women’s college.

Again: “You can do better than that.”

End of discussion.

I enrolled at Miami University for my freshman year. I had no clue what to major in, so I chose English because I loved it and had done well in it during high school.

Miami was huge. I made some lifelong friends—50-plus-year friends—and I joined a sorority. I had poor study habits. I flunked ballet because I skipped class too many times. And at the end of the year, I left because my mother had cancer and needed me at home.

Then I applied to nursing school. That was another short-lived experience, but I picked up enough skills in that year to serve me in a working career for the next 40 years—and I found a fiancé who was graduating from Dartmouth.

Skip forward those next 40 years. I was almost ready to retire. After a few starts and stops at trying to finish that nursing degree, I was living in Georgia.

Georgia has a wonderful perk for those who are 62 and older: attend any state university tuition-free—not just to audit classes, but to earn a degree.

By this time, I was tired of the medical field. So I chose to return to my first love: English Literature.

Taking two or three courses a quarter, I began at age 62 and finally graduated, Summa Cum Laude, at age 68.

Between college classes at Georgia State University, working as a medical assistant, and being a grandmother, my hands were full.

I say to people, “This is just the best time of my life.” And really, going back to school made it so—just the new ideas, the reading, the challenge.

My five grandchildren—three boys and two girls—knew all about Nana being in college. At one point, I was taking German at the same time my twin grandsons were learning it in their fifth-grade class. (They said I was going faster than they were—and I loved it.)

Sometimes I read the same books they were assigned in high school—Romeo and Juliet, for example. I even took a grammar class (diagramming, parts of speech) that helped me edit Cora’s papers once or twice.

We were moving through this, together.

During one spring semester, I studied abroad in Paris, taking a class about the French Revolution from the perspective of British writers.

I stayed in a hostel with a bunch of twenty-somethings in France.

I did!

Side note: It is much more fun to stay in a hostel in your 20’s.

I didn’t put a deadline on graduation. It was never about checking a box.

This was about the journey.

I have friends who say, “I could never have done this!” and others who have encouraged me to go on for a Master’s.

To both I say: You must have the desire.

I had a great desire—to finish the degree, yes, but also for the accumulated knowledge. To have read all the books I never read. To have written scores of papers.

I accomplished what I set out to do.

I plugged the hole that had been waiting to be filled.

And for anyone else thinking about it?

Just take one course. Just try it.

It might just become the best time of your life.

You can read more of my mom’s story in an NPR feature here.