From Grandmother to Nurse
Sometimes the dreams we postpone never truly disappear.
For years, Ralene Kratzer believed college simply wasn't part of her story. She married shortly after high school, raised a family, and never imagined she would one day become a nurse.
Then her grandson was born prematurely.
Standing beside his hospital bed, watching him connected to a breathing tube, Ralene quietly told her husband something she had carried inside for years.
"If I had gone to college when I was younger, I would have studied nursing."
Her husband didn't hesitate.
"Then go."
Preparing for a deployment to Afghanistan, he encouraged her to use his GI Bill benefits while he was away. Their children were grown, the timing finally seemed right, and at forty-nine years old, Ralene enrolled in college for the first time.
She quickly discovered that returning to school after decades away required more courage than she expected.
Writing papers intimidated her. Algebra felt impossible.
After sitting through her first algebra class completely overwhelmed, she withdrew from the course. Rather than giving up, she borrowed a homeschool algebra program, spent the winter teaching herself the material, and returned the following semester ready.
She earned an A.
That determination carried her into nursing school, where she was one of only a handful of middle-aged students surrounded by classmates decades younger. Instead of feeling out of place, she became both a classmate and mentor, studying alongside her peers while encouraging many of the younger students navigating college and life for the first time.
When graduation arrived, Ralene had finished first in her class, was selected as commencement speaker, and was voted by her classmates as the nurse they would most want caring for them in the hospital.
At fifty-two years old, she began her dream career as a mother-baby nurse.
The journey didn't end there.
While completing her bachelor's degree, she balanced work, caregiving for her aging mother, and helping care for her grandchildren. Credit for Prior Learning recognized the expertise she had already developed through years as a medical transcriptionist, allowing her to accelerate her degree and focus on learning she had not yet experienced.
Soon she accepted another unexpected opportunity.
She became a nursing instructor at the very community college where her own journey had begun.
"I went from being someone who wasn't interested in college to being an instructor. Who would have ever thought it?"
Today, Ralene looks back and sees that education changed far more than her career. It changed how she saw herself, influenced future generations of her family, and allowed her to care for others in ways she had only imagined years before while standing beside her grandson's hospital bed.
Her story reminds us that sometimes the dreams we postpone are simply waiting for the right season to grow.
Ralene Kratzer is one of fifty adult learners featured in Beyond the Degree: Stories of Adult Learner Comebacks and What They Teach Us. Read her complete story in her own words, and discover what these remarkable comebacks teach us, in the book from the Center for Academic Innovation.