The Dream I Never Let Go
At sixty years old, Karen Malone was retired from a 34-year career, the mother of two grown sons, a grandmother of ten, and still carrying a dream she had put aside decades earlier.
She wanted to finish college.
Karen had started college immediately after high school, but like so many adult learners, life intervened. She needed a full-time job to support herself. What she thought would be a temporary pause stretched into years filled with marriage, raising a family, building a career, and all the responsibilities that came with adulthood.
College became something she would get back to “someday.”
But the dream never entirely disappeared.
Karen spent 34 years at Talbots, building a career she loved as a Workforce Management Analyst. She retired at 55, but retirement did not last long. Wanting to remain active and continue contributing, she accepted a position with the Knoxville Utilities Board.
Five years later, an ordinary conversation in the copier room changed the trajectory of her life.
A colleague, Justin King, suggested that she return to school and finish her bachelor’s degree. Then he did something equally important: he helped her understand how she could actually do it.
His encouragement awakened something Karen had carried quietly for years.
“The dream had never disappeared. It had simply been waiting.”
Returning at sixty was not about checking a box. Karen wanted to finish what she had started and prove to herself that a goal postponed did not have to become a goal abandoned. She also wanted her children and grandchildren to see something through her example.
Dreams do not have expiration dates.
Karen enrolled in the University of Louisville’s online program, which gave her the flexibility to continue working while balancing family, community commitments, and school. But flexibility did not mean easy.
Technology had changed dramatically since she had last been a student. Learning management systems, virtual collaboration, online discussions, and electronic assignments were unfamiliar. Two of her oldest granddaughters became her technology tutors, patiently helping their grandmother navigate a new way of learning.
Karen found her own rhythm, too. Often that meant getting up around three in the morning to work on assignments before starting her workday.
There were missed social events, weekends spent writing papers, and moments when she wondered whether she was simply too old to be doing this.
Each completed assignment gave her an answer.
She could do it.
Along the way, Karen discovered that the decades between her first attempt at college and her return had not put her behind. They had given her something to bring back with her: years of professional experience, problem-solving skills, discipline, perspective, and a much clearer understanding of who she was.
“Experience isn’t a disadvantage.”
Support mattered, too. Her husband became her biggest cheerleader, taking on responsibilities at home and sometimes carrying dinner into her office while she studied. Her coworkers celebrated her milestones. Her granddaughters helped her master technology. A professor, Dr. Thomas Teague Jr., challenged her to recognize strengths she had overlooked in herself.
Karen began to understand that she was earning more than a degree.
She was rediscovering her confidence.
“The woman who had once believed she had missed her opportunity for a college degree slowly disappeared.”
In her place was someone who understood that she was still capable of learning, growing, and doing difficult things.
And Karen is not finished learning. Even as she prepares to complete her bachelor’s degree, she is already imagining another goal: studying Spanish, something she has long wanted to do.
Her journey has changed the meaning of “someday.”
For decades, someday meant later. Now Karen understands that a dream can wait without disappearing—and that there can still be time to return to it.
“Dreams deferred are not dreams denied.”
Sometimes the opportunity we think we missed has simply been waiting for us to decide that now is finally the time.
Karen Malone 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.