Photo by Kristine Larsen
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Back to School at Age 50+
By Timothy Haas, December 2003
What's it like to wrestle exams and homework all over again in pursuit
of a new career, flanked by students less than half your age, while also caring
for an aging parent? Find out in this compelling web-exclusive series…
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Back to School at Age 50+
In this exclusive online series at AARPmagazine.org, we'll be charting
the highs and lows of 55-year-old Theresa Statuti's educational adventure,
joining her as she makes her way on three different Camden County (N.J.)
College campuses among classmates a third her age. We'll even peer over her
shoulder as she taps into a new trend—home-based online education.
At 55, former nun and retired computer security director Theresa Statuti has
set her schoolmates' tongues wagging. In at least one of her classes,
anyway.
"I don't go around advertising my grades," she says on a snowy
afternoon in early December, "but the Tuesday night I was out because of
my food poisoning, the Medical Coding instructor handed back a test. She
apparently told everyone she wasn't happy with the marks, and said to them,
'No one appears to be getting it, except this woman'—she held up
Theresa's test in her hands—'who got an 89. All of you should
form a study group with her.' "
The next week, one of the other older students, who had been snubbing
Theresa's attempts to be friendly since the first day of the course, turned
around in her seat before the lecture began and informed her that she was about
to be very popular. "The kids figured out it was me," Theresa says
with a rueful chuckle. "Before this, I could feel the stares when I was
called on to answer a question no one else was able to get. But now this woman
talks to me all the time, and lots of other people come up and ask me what I
did on a particular homework problem. It's kind of funny. To me, my grade
was nothing to brag about."
Coming from someone else, that remark might sound like false modesty, or
even veiled condescension, but Theresa means it. She's been pushing herself
in every course, and she doesn't like it when she falls short of her best.
The teachers of her campus-based classes have noticed: "The other night
one of my instructors pulled me aside and gave me back a test I had taken; the
grade was 95. She said, 'Do you know your semester average so far is a
95?' I tried to be nonchalant, but she said, 'You should feel glad,
because you've worked very hard.' "
Online Learning
And that's what makes her experience in her online biology class
somewhat puzzling. She's approached it with the same diligence and has had
no problem doing well on the computer-graded multiple-choice tests, but,
despite spending hours a week on library research to improve the essays that
form a large portion of the coursework, she hasn't been able to earn an A
for them.
"The professors gave me a B on the first set, an 85; I was
bummed," she says. "I thought I'd given them what they wanted. I
knew the content was there, but apparently the answers weren't long enough.
My sister, who teaches nursing, told me, 'Sometimes teachers think if your
answers are short that you've only brushed the surface.' One of the
professors sent a chiding group email saying he expected the essays to be
'college level.' I guess it was meant as a general thing, but my
eyebrows hit my hairline.
"Without specific feedback, though, I did the second set of essays the
same way. I got an 88 this time, and I don't know what I did
differently."
After buzzing with activity early in the semester, the class's online
message board, which lets students communicate both publicly and privately with
one another and the instructors, has gone silent. "Once the grades came
out for the essays, the messaging stopped," Theresa says. "As our
term paper came closer to its due date, I tried asking all kinds of questions.
Everyone could read my message to the professor and his answer. Again, there
was nothing definite about length, just general stuff—be clear, be
concise.
"So I didn't baffle them with BS. My paper was 11 pages long with
the bibliography—and I got a 100." She laughs and shrugs.
"Maybe one professor is grading the essays and the other the
papers?"
These frustrations haven't dimmed Theresa's appreciation of how easy
it's been to use the distance-learning system. With her school ID number
and a password, she enters a secure area of the college's website. Once
she's signed on, the computer screen displays a graphic that looks like a
book, with clickable tabs along the right-hand side that lead to a list of
reading assignments, due dates for essays and tests, and other information
needed for the course.
 
Some online classes offer simulcast video lectures or require students to
log in at specified intervals for real-time interaction, but Theresa's is
more like an old-fashioned correspondence course with an electronic component.
Apart from taking the tests by certain deadlines and handing in her essays on
time, she's completely free to make up her own schedule. "Sometimes I
log in on Saturday afternoons, and other times it could be 3 in the morning
when I can't sleep," she says. She spends about three hours a week on
biology classwork, but only about a third of that actually sitting at the
computer; most of her reading is done in the thick text, which comes with an
access code that unlocks web-based extras provided by the publisher.
"It's been a positive process for the most part," she says.
"I'm not tied down to a specific meeting time for this class; I can
read the material at my own speed. But if you're the type who needs direct
contact with the professors, forget it. Of course, my two have offices on the
main suburban campus; I could call them. I choose to communicate strictly
through the computer."
The last set of essays is due in a few days, but the pressure hasn't
squelched her humor. "I am loading these people down with information this
time," she says. "And one of the topics is 'Describe a reasonable
answer to the question of how tendons and ligaments of elderly people tend to
stiffen and lose elasticity.' Are mine stiffening up with all this sitting
and typing? You bet!"
As much as she's been enjoying the academics, Theresa knows there's
much more to beginning her new career. In one of her first classes, an
instructor had slipped her a flyer advertising a meeting of the Health
Information Technology Club and suggested that she join. The club brings
together all the members of the college's HIT program, which trains medical
librarians and transcriptionists, as well as billers and coders, for socializing
and networking.
"I want to meet more people in the program. I've met
transcriptionists and people who are going for the associate's degree in
coding that the college offers," Theresa says. "Apparently there are
quite a few of these clubs on campus. We've had two meetings so far, with
speakers from the field. There are few if any people in their early 20s;
they're all in their mid-20s or 'mature students'—I just love
that term. These are by and large very clear-eyed people.
"I had to laugh—I wound up talking to one young fellow who
didn't seem too sure of himself. I gave him whatever advice I had, which
basically boiled down to 'go for it.' He applied for a job with one of
the speakers and got it. Two weeks later he saw me in the student lounge and
came flying up—'That pep talk you gave me worked!' "
Theresa's Classes
Theresa Statuti, the subject of our ongoing series Back to School at Age
50+, is taking four classes this semester in her pursuit of a new career in medical coding
and reimbursement:
• Human Biology
• Medical Coding I
• Medical Reimbursement
• Medical Terminology
Spring-Semester Scheduling
From the time that Theresa entered the program, she'd expected to take
four courses in each of the fall and spring semesters, then finish with just
two classes during the first summer session before beginning an internship. But
when the college's spring catalog came out in late October, it revealed
that two courses normally taken concurrently, Basic Pharmacology and Advanced
Medical Coding, were scheduled for the same time on different campuses.
"I didn't want to lose what I've learned this semester in
Medical Coding I," she says, "so I had to sign up for Advanced
Medical Coding in the spring. But I wasn't sure there would be another
Basic Pharm class in time." Never one to give up easily, Theresa spent the
next few weeks trying to find a way to make her original plan work.
She inquired about taking part in a special section of the pharmacology
class meant for employees of a local hospital, but was turned down. Then
Lynette Williamson, a program director who was so welcoming when Theresa was
checking out the college, offered to oversee an independent-study arrangement.
Word shot down from the dean's office: Lynette's spring teaching load
was too full to allow it. It looked as though Theresa would have to find an
equivalent class at another institution and battle two bureaucracies to get the
credits.
Before Theresa had to resort to anything drastic, though, Lynette was able
to confirm that she would be teaching a regular section of pharmacology during
the first summer session. Theresa accepted the temporary setback and redirected
her attentions with characteristic enthusiasm.
"I was the second person in line on the first day of preregistration in
mid-November—current students can get the jump," she says. "In
fact, I ended up being the first to actually finish with the process, because
the girl in front of me didn't have all her papers together!"
Her spring-semester schedule—Basic Pathophysiology, Introductory CPT-4
Coding (a special branch of coding for doctors' offices), and Advanced
Medical Coding—puts her in class Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights.
It's something of a change from this semester's two daytime classes and
one evening class spread over just two days, but she doesn't think it will
alter her study patterns. "I'll still have the daylight hours to do my
homework, and I still plan to go to the campus before class to read and
review." A new facility on the Camden campus that includes classroom space
and a parking garage in the same building has also eased her mind about
safety.
But what's occupying Theresa right now? Finals. Four of them, to be
taken in the span of just a few days. Here's what she faces:
- Medical Terminology: 100 multiple-choice questions
- Medical Reimbursement: 50 multiple-choice
- Medical Coding I: 50 coding problems
- Human Biology: 99 multiple-choice questions
She says she's looking forward to the coming week—review week,
during which each of her instructors will devote half an hour of class time to
test preparation. To get ready, she's been "spending a lot more time
at the lounge on the Cherry Hill campus, where a lot of the kids
study—it's easier there than at home. But since I worked steadily all
through the semester, I'm mostly going back over my corrected tests and
combing my textbooks for oddball information.
"The coding instructor gave us 75 practice problems to code, but
I'm concentrating on my biology essays right now," she says.
"I'll get to them tomorrow." Even with these last-minute
exercises, "there hasn't been a point where there was too much work.
My energy level is just as high as when I started. I see the finals as just one
more thing to do."
Her voice takes on a confiding tone. "Being retired really
helps."
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