The residents of the Eugene Hotel retirement center asked Janice Corbett, 52, whether she would hold a party to celebrate her graduation. They thought she needed to celebrate her accomplishment – receiving a degree in public relations from the University 20 years after she began her studies there.
And so Corbett will put on a luncheon party June 17 for the residents of the retirement community where she works at the front desk and supervises on weekend nights.
“It’s like having about 90 grandparents,” she said.
Corbett said each time she goes into work, residents ask questions such as, “Have you done your homework today? How have you done on your midterm? We want a report.”
Residents are the first people who support her, she said, and they give her pep-talks when she is having trouble.
As she finishes the last leg of her journey, she says they have been with her all the way.
Corbett was already older than many of her classmates when she began undergraduate studies at the University in 1986. Her first experience with higher education came immediately after her graduation in 1971 from St. Mary’s School in Medford. She attended what was then Southern Oregon College, where she studied secretarial science.
After two years at SOC, she was recruited to be a stenographer with the FBI branch in Portland. She found the offer exciting and moved to Portland to pursue the job. Corbett left her FBI position in 1976 after her father passed away, and she returned to Medford and took several different jobs before becoming an undergraduate adviser in the business college at the University in 1981.
As a classified employee, Corbett was entitled to take one class per term at a reduced rate. In 1986, she decided to take advantage of this opportunity and work toward a degree. She began taking one class per term, slowly making progress. In 1991 she left the University to become a tour guide with Evergreen Stage Lines in Portland. But spending too much time away from home took a toll on her, and she returned to continue her education.
She attended Lane Community College, this time working for the bookstore at the beginning of every term to earn a one-course tuition waver. Taking one class per term, she worked through as many transfer credits as possible at LCC, returning to the University in 2005 to finish her studies.
Corbett said her experiences before she began studying at the University helped her focus and gave her a greater appreciation for the material she was learning.
University professor Jim Upshaw said that Corbett, like other returning and older students, brings more focus and a clearer perspective on life and what she wants out of it.
“She knows what she doesn’t know and needs to know,” he said.
Her experiences in various jobs showed her how communication can often break down, which led her to pursue public relations. Corbett found the skills she learned as an academic adviser were applicable to courses she took in psychology. Because she was taking only one class per term, Corbett felt that she had the opportunity to more fully explore and appreciate each topic that she studied, which she would not be able to do with a full course load, she said.
Though Corbett became a student again, she could not drop her other responsibilities. She continued to work during her tenure as a student. Today, Corbett supports her mother, Beryl, 91, whom she describes as a full-time job along with her part-time job at the Eugene Hotel.
“I think (Corbett) shares the experience of many other non-traditional students, including me,” said assistant journalism professor Kathy Campbell. “When you wait so long to make a dream come true, you give all you can. You juggle your family responsibilities, your
finances and your energy, and then, like Jan, you cherish every moment of the experience, knowing just how close you came to missing it altogether.”
As an older student, Corbett grew up in a different era than most other students and was familiar with a different pop culture. She was occasionally uneasy about how she was seen by her classmates, she said.
“Sometimes I don’t know how the other students perceived me,” Corbett said. “A lot of times maybe I was perceived as a mother figure because I could have been their mother. Sometimes their parents were younger than I was.”
Corbett said that, for the most part, other students respected her, and she was treated no differently than if she were 21 years old.
“They saw me as being somebody older than average, and yet I fit in,” she said.
Students, staff and faculty helped her keep going when she questioned whether or not she could ever finish, she said.
Overall, Corbett described her experience at the University as positive. She stressed that her experience shows that anyone can achieve what she has achieved if they truly work for it.
She said she lives by the words of her father: “The day you stop learning is the day you die.”