Twenty years after Geoffrey Kimbrough ended his career dancing
ballet on center stage, the 50-year-old undergraduate says he feels
invisible.
“I’m old enough to be your father, and it’s
the same with everybody else in class. I don’t instantly
attract a study group. Nobody knows quite what to do with
me,” says Kimbrough, one of 490 undergraduates over the age
of 25 who enrolled at UCLA this fall.
The reasons some students enter college later in life vary
widely, says Tina Oakland, director of the Center for Women &
Men, which provides counseling and other services for older
students. Some have spent time in the military or raising children,
and others simply did not have the money to pursue an education
before entering the working world.
For Kimbrough, a self-proclaimed underachiever when he was
younger, the choice to put off a college degree meant the chance to
pursue his dream of dancing professionally.
Kimbrough graduated in 1971 from Taft High School in the San
Fernando Valley. At the time academics were not his strong suit,
and after a couple years of junior college, he told his parents he
wanted a career in the arts.
“College was Plan B. … As a classical dancer, I
couldn’t afford the time to spend four years in college. I
had to be out there in a company by the time I was 20. And I
was,” said Kimbrough, soft-spoken but articulate, with
glasses and graying hair.
His mother, Gena Kimbrough, 83, a retired teacher living in
Sacramento, says she remembers being initially disappointed by her
son’s decision to postpone earning a degree. But when she saw
he was determined to take the path of a performer, she supported
him in his endeavors.
“I would have preferred he went to a four-year college and
did something else, but that was his choice. … He did what he
enjoyed doing, and until the time came when he needed to do
something else, he was happy with it. And that’s the main
thing,” she said.
A young dancer fixated with ballet, Kimbrough brushed aside his
doubts and followed his instincts forward into a career that took
him on a dizzy, decade-long trip across the United States.
The first spot he secured in a company was with the Pacific
Northwest Ballet in Seattle. From there, it was on to Cleveland,
Ohio; Pittsburgh, Penn.; Moscow, Idaho; and Dallas, Texas.
He spent his days rehearsing with fellow dancers, donning silks
and wools and the finest of fabrics. When performance time rolled
around, it became a “noon-to-3 a.m.” existence,
Kimbrough remembers with a smile. After a show, he and his peers
would be too wired from the endorphins and adrenaline of performing
to do anything but party into the early morning hours.
“It was a gamble. And I won, so I can’t regret
it,” Kimbrough says.
But he acknowledges others who took the same risk were less
fortunate.
“It’s very sad when you see somebody who went for it
and they’re waiting tables, and they can’t get a job
because they’re just not quite good enough. … Then
they’re in their mid to late 20s and it’s too late
““ they’re not going to have a career, and they have to
figure out what they’re going to do with their lives,”
he says. “It’s very hard.”
Finding community
Students like Kimbrough who opt to return to school find
themselves in the minority on university campuses.
A school of about 38,000 students, UCLA admitted 807
undergraduates over the age of 25 for this fall quarter, drawing
from a pool of 2,122 older applicants. Like Kimbrough, the 490 who
chose to enroll are all transfers.
For older students, also known as re-entry or non-traditional
students, adjusting to the university scene is daunting, says
Oakland, who studied at UCLA after taking years off from her
education.
Roz Gamble, who at 52 is a fourth-year classical civilizations
student, says she was afraid at first she would “stick out
like a sore thumb” in a class of 20-year-olds. In a few
courses, she was older than her professors.
“I just wanted to blend in. But of course, there’s
no way I’m going to blend in,” she said.
To help older students like Gamble cope with their new
environment, UCLA hired a re-entry counselor for a three-year trial
period that ended in June; with budget cuts and a dim fiscal
prospect, the university can no longer fill the position, Oakland
said.
But materials the counselor prepared, like information pamphlets
available at the Center for Women & Men, continue to help
students though she is gone, Oakland added.
Another resource older students can tap is Alpha Gamma Epsilon,
a sorority-fraternity started five years ago to help build a
community of re-entry students.
AGE President Sheila Stone is a 51-year-old single mother who
said she put off college to raise her children. Now, she and one of
her sons, Jonathan, are both fourth-year anthropology students at
UCLA. The two took a class together this summer. After graduation,
they will enter a new phase in their lives, Jonathan said.
“We’re going to be splitting up probably, and
she’ll be off doing her thing, and I’m going to be
doing mine. It’s going to be a big change,” he
said.
Besides juggling school and family, Stone also spends her time
worrying about AGE’s future.
Last year was a bad year for the organization. Membership
dwindled to seven or eight, Stone said.
Because older students are spread out among many disciplines,
getting the word out that AGE exists is difficult, she says.
Continuity and organization are also challenging because almost all
re-entry students are transfers who finish their UCLA studies in
just two years.
Gamble, who spent her post-high school years working in her
family’s shoe manufacturing business in England, says she was
surprised to hear of AGE and other services targeting her
demographic. An enthusiastic, talkative woman, she says she would
have loved to develop relationships with others sharing her
experience.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
Oakland said the Center for Women & Men reaches out to older
students by presenting information at transfer orientation
sessions. But Gamble said it’s difficult to siphon applicable
resources from all the material UCLA hands out.
Once students do find AGE, the friendships they make through it
are ones that last, Stone says. It’s a place to vent and
exchange advice about mutual concerns like balancing academics with
work and family.
While resources exist at UCLA, Gamble says she’s found
some bureaucratic procedures unaccommodating to re-entry
students’ unique needs. She says she was unable to secure a
counseling appointment that fit her packed schedule, despite
explaining to the office that she works 35 hours a week.
But though Gamble finds UCLA’s administrative side
frustrating, other aspects of the university are more welcoming,
she says. A younger student helped her conquer Latin, and she says
she’s always surprised by the number of people on campus that
recognize her and stop to say hello.
She adds that she’s anticipating spring, when friends and
family will attend graduation ceremonies. Her mother, 82, plans to
fly to Los Angeles from England.
The two daughters she put through college will also come.
“They were thrilled that I was doing this,” Gamble
says. “They’re extremely proud of their mum. They tell
everyone about me.”
Reinventing a future
While re-entry students may feel isolated, their population at
UCLA and other universities seems to be growing, Oakland says.
Adults are returning to school in large numbers, many hoping a
degree will unlock new options for them in the working world, she
says.
Kimbrough, an economics student, is moving toward a new career
for the second time in 20 years.
When a tendon injury ended his career as a professional dancer
in the early 1980s, he moved back in with his parents and began
studying computer science at a junior college. He was hoping to
transfer to a university, but grabbed a job instead when an offer
came along.
Mark Kampe, a UCLA computer science lecturer and
Kimbrough’s close friend of 37 years, says he remembers how
tough the transition away from dancing was for Kimbrough. The two
would chat while running during those years, and Kampe says it was
apparent Kimbrough would have returned to performing “in a
heartbeat” if the option had been viable.
“He really poured himself very heavily into his computer
science (studies),” Kampe says. “And I don’t know
to what extent it was just from (interest), and how much it was
because he had a hole in life which he had to fill.”
Kimbrough rose quickly in the computer industry, taking on
management roles overseeing software engineers. But while the money
was good, Kimbrough says he tired of the field after 15 years.
He retired briefly in 2000, but the dot-com crash that followed
diminished the value of savings he had in the form of stock.
So he decided to enroll in class again, hoping to reinvent
himself once more. This time, after fulfilling prerequisites with a
4.0 grade point average, he applied and was accepted to UCLA.
Kimbrough says he wants to combine his knowledge of the arts and
business worlds to secure a job managing a non-profit or arts
organization. A degree in economics with a minor in public policy
will help him reach that goal, he says.
“Somebody said that we all have at least three careers. If
you’re thinking about what am I going to do with my life,
it’s the wrong question. Because what are you going to do
with the next 10 or 15 years of your life is plenty to answer.
Because you’ll do something else later,” he said.
His mother said she was a bit surprised to hear her son would be
going to UCLA, because he “never really cared that much for
school before.”
“I was very pleased. … It never hurts to have an
education, no matter what,” she said.
Better with age
Kimbrough’s connections to UCLA run deep. His sister
Theresa, now 55, chose the conventional route, studying at the
university right after leaving high school. His wife of 15 years,
Lynn, 69, is an alumna who plays with the alumni band.
Kimbrough says while he knew UCLA was where he wanted to end up,
he acknowledges his experience will be different than those of his
loved ones who came to the university over 30 years ago.
“I don’t expect that I’ll be building any
lifetime college relationships like my wife, who still is very
close friends with … four people who shared a sorority room in
the ’60s, who still get together. The sorority’s not
even here anymore,” he said.
Another difference is today’s college atmosphere, which
Kimbrough believes has distanced itself from the activist tones of
the 1970s, when he would have gone to college had he opted to do so
closely following high school.
“It was the age of the Berkeley radical, and now
it’s the age of the Berkeley MBA. That’s sort of
different,” he said.
Kimbrough too has changed since the ’70s, and the one-time
underachiever is now a star student.
Lynn, a mechanical designer, says her husband fills her in about
every facet of his school day, from his teachers and homework to
the “amazingly gorgeous young women on campus.”
“He just loves it. He just loves every part of it.
He’s just so excited about learning,” she said.
And in many ways, Kimbrough’s age is advantageous, she
adds. Lynn says her husband is more organized and focused in his
studies than she was in college, and that while she was
“intimidated and overawed” by her professors, he has
the self-confidence to interact with them in a meaningful
manner.
From the perspective of a lecturer, Kampe says re-entry students
like Kimbrough tend to be more successful and driven than younger
ones because they have specific goals, “because they know
exactly why they’re there.”
Kimbrough says he’s able to concentrate on his studies
more easily than younger students because he isn’t distracted
by pressures to socialize and figure out what he wants in life.
“I’m not using 90 percent of my brain cells trying
to get laid, or deciding whether I want to,” he said.
He adds that his life experience has enhanced his education at
unexpected moments. While doing a statistics exercise this summer
on anomalies in what was supposed to be a random draft lottery in
the Vietnam era, he says he connected to the subject in a way most
of his peers could not.
“I can not only look at the statistics ““ I
remembered, because I was there. The draft lottery was very, very
important to me because I could have been drafted if I hadn’t
gotten lucky in the lottery. It just added another
dimension,” he says.
Kimbrough says he plans to graduate in 2006, but is in no hurry
to depart from the “drop-dead gorgeous” university
world he just entered.
“I’m having the time of my life. It’s not a
bed of roses, but it’s not supposed to be,” he
says.
And looking back on his decision to put off an education 30
years ago, before many of his current classmates were born,
Kimbrough smiles, his satisfaction lighting his face.
He says when he looks around a crowded lecture hall at the
students filling the seats, he knows that many struggled with and
chose not to take the gamble that he did.
“They didn’t want to try it. And they go to college
and they do something else, or they get married and they have a
life. And they always have to wonder, “˜What if? What if I had
tried it ““ would I have made it?’ And I don’t
have to wonder. I know.”
For more information on Alpha Gamma Epsilon, the
sorority-fraternity for re-entry students, e-mail Sheila Stone at
wordgoddess13@hotmail.com.