Kimberly Gwynne knows that she can’t live the same life as most students. The 34-year-old nontraditional student and her nine-year partner David Watson, 38, wake up at 6:15 a.m. three days a week to get to their 9 a.m. Geography 141 class on time.
The two environmental science majors live in Salem and commute every week day to attend school in Eugene. They home school their children, work all day Saturday and Sunday to pay the bills and struggle to manage their load of homework and reading.
Gwynne and Watson are classic examples of nontraditional students.
Nontraditional Student Union co-Director Steven Burns estimated that approximately 1,600 nontraditional students attend the University, but he admitted it’s hard to know for sure because the criteria for being a “nontrad” — having children, transferring from another school or being older than the typical student — are often difficult to track or gauge.
He did say that Gwynne and Watson’s situation is a common one, noting that he has seen students drive from Roseburg, Salem and Florence every day to go to school here. Many of them are even forced to spend the night if the weather is bad or if they don’t have time to drive back and forth. Gwynne and Watson know firsthand how difficult it can be for nontraditional students to pay the bills and raise a family while attending school.
Their grades are also suffering from the extra pressure.
During his last term at Chemeketa Community College — where both Gwynne and Watson earned Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer degrees — Watson held a part-time job on campus and a part-time job off campus, was heavily involved in student government and took 24 credits.
“He still got a 4.0 GPA,” Gwynne said, adding that she too pulled A’s and B’s.
When he came to the University last fall, Watson realized his AAOT degree was a “complete waste of time” that grossly under-prepared him for studies at the University.
“This term we’re taking 16 credits with weekend part-time pizza driver jobs, and this term is overwhelming,” Watson said. “This is not a sustainable practice. Our GPAs are suffering.”
Gwynne said the most difficult part of school is the over-abundance of required reading. Yet, they’ve managed to turn the inconvenience of a grueling commute into a useful time for studying by reading to each other as they drive.
“We just find little squish times when we can read to each other,” Gwynne said.
For Watson and Gwynne, paying the bills is especially difficult. They support Gwynne’s 16-year-old daughter Breanna and the couple’s four-year-old son Dreyan.
To deal with the financial demands of higher education, the couple has started recording and typing class notes for University Disability Services, bringing in about $100 per term, Gwynne said. She also said they’re going to start auctioning things on eBay to bring in a little extra money.
“Our typical pattern is to work like crazy during the summer and then try to do a collage of small things for small incomes when we have the opportunity,” Watson said.
Another part of their life that often suffers with their busy lifestyle is their family, which Watson describes as “remarkably close.”
Gwynne said they don’t have a lot of quality time with their children except for the occasional evening. While Breanna and Dreyan come down to Eugene with their parents on the weekdays, all of them are usually occupied with reading and studying.
Burns explained that juggling jobs, family and school can be difficult for many nontraditional students, which is why the Nontraditional Student Union is needed. The group helps students find money and arrange childcare, as well as provide other resources for nontraditional students.
He also said feeling like an outsider is a common problem.
“For a nontraditional student to come to this University as an older student feeling like a sore thumb — that is a psychological barrier that we have to deal with,” he said.
But the apparent age barrier between traditional and nontraditional students didn’t discourage Watson. He decided his two-year forestry degree from Chemeketa wasn’t going to be good enough and he needed to go back to school.
“That forestry degree opened opportunities for me to be a seasonal, part-time, entry-level state forest ranger in charge of cleaning (Port-A-Potty) cans in three state parks in Wisconsin and one in Nebraska, with tens of visitors every year,” he said. “So, I decided that life needed to be better than that. We both went back and got our AAOTs so we could come here as juniors.”