The non-traditional students are viewed as ugly outsiders, bizarre anomalies, in an unending ocean of 18- to 22-year-olds.

Unspoken or not, the aging process is often seen as a repulsive aspect of human existence.

Popular culture force-feeds us what we are to perceive as beautiful, graceful and attractive. The young and flawless individual is successful and aesthetically flawless. The showing of age is an undesirable trait that we seem to do anything to avoid recognizing in ourselves.

The industry of cosmetic surgery thrives and popular media continues to throw one unrecognizable pseudo-flawless individual after the next onto primetime television.

Unfortunately, this gross blemish in society rears its ugly head on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. The non-traditional students are viewed as ugly outsiders, bizarre anomalies, in an unending ocean of 18- to 22-year-olds.

One should have great amount of respect for anyone age 30 or above who radically alters their lives in order to work toward a degree. Especially since they are likely willing to deal with the sense of degradation that goes along with being perceived as an outsider to an elitist club.

Perhaps you may have seen one or two of them in one of your hundred-level classes.

They are the ones who show up to class red-eyed from staying up all night with their sick child. They are the ones with thoughtful and intelligent things to say in discussion sections. They are people with life experience and wisdom that come only through the aging process. They are proof that the concept of further education is a gift, not something that a parent is forcing upon a young adult.

The non-traditional student is not to be viewed as creepy, or “like, strange or something.” We must recognize the fact that they are sacrificing $3,000 per semester to further a career and expand their knowledge.

They are on campus to learn and we can learn much from them. They have the experience of a 100,000 lonely hangovers, of relationships gone wrong and of unfathomable bad times. And good times that are for many yet to come.

Many of them may be happy to share these experiences, if we are willing to look past the fact that they are not like us as far as an age bracket. Their presence is valid, enriching, vital.

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