Embracing the Suck Together
When TK Stoudt became a father at eighteen, many people assumed they already knew how his story would unfold.
Some said he had ruined his future. Others suggested his opportunities had narrowed before adulthood had even begun.
For a time, TK believed those stories himself.
Looking back, he now realizes the greatest challenge wasn't becoming a young father.
It was deciding who would author the rest of his life.
"Because if you're not careful, other people's fear, disappointment, or limited imagination will begin writing your story for you."
Determined to rewrite that narrative, TK enlisted in the United States Air Force. Military service gave him discipline, purpose, and the confidence to believe that identity is not fixed—it is built.
Yet even while serving, another thread quietly continued through his life.
Learning.
Education became far more than earning credentials. It became a process of becoming.
Over the next four decades, TK earned an associate degree, a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and eventually, at sixty-one years old, a Ph.D. But when he reflects on those accomplishments, he remembers something much more important than transcripts or diplomas.
He remembers the transformation.
The mentors who expanded his thinking.
The classmates who challenged him.
The students who inspired him.
The difficult conversations that reshaped how he understood leadership, purpose, and service.
Along the way, another lesson emerged.
For years, TK believed resilience meant handling life's challenges alone. But through military service, higher education, breathwork, and doctoral research with student veterans, he discovered something different.
Resilience is rarely an individual achievement.
It grows in community.
One participant in his doctoral research described that idea with a phrase TK has never forgotten:
"Embracing the suck together."
The hardship matters.
But the word that changes everything is together.
Today, TK brings that philosophy into every classroom he teaches. His courses aren't simply about content. They create space for veterans and adult learners to tell their stories, challenge limiting beliefs, and discover they don't have to navigate difficult journeys alone.
He wants every student to understand that their lived experience belongs in the classroom.
"Their stories are not distractions from learning. Their stories are learning."
Looking back, TK no longer measures education by the degrees he earned.
He measures it by the person he became—and by the lives he now helps shape through teaching.
His story reminds us that adult learners don't simply return to school to earn credentials.
They return to reclaim authorship over their lives.
And sometimes, the most powerful thing an educator can do is help someone believe they can begin writing a new chapter.
TK Stoudt is one of fifty adult learners featured in Beyond the Degree: Stories of Adult Learner Comebacks and What They Teach Us. Read his complete story in his own words, and discover what these remarkable comebacks teach us, in the book from the Center for Academic Innovation.