Back to school isn’t just for school-aged children

Call me Rodney Dangerfield, because I’m going “Back to School.”


After years of toying around with the notion of getting a master’s degree, and hoping my schedule would open up for me to do so easily, I came to the realization that would never happen and I should just go for it.

Inspired by my wife, Jennifer, who made it work for her over the past two years in getting a master of education degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout), despite a busy schedule, I submitted my application to the Department of Communications at UW-Stevens Point (UW-SP) just two weeks ago. Working with impressive speed, officials from UW-SP notified me just one week later that I was in. Registering for classes just days before they began, I was still asking co-workers where certain buildings at the university were located. Call it orientation via co-worker.

It happened so quickly that I haven’t even had a chance to tell my mother. She’s going to read about my new endeavor when she opens the paper Friday, and I’m sure she’ll call asking why I hadn’t told her. Here’s the answer: I wanted to make sure I got in and registered before telling anybody. It would be too embarrassing to tell people and then get a rejection letter.

Because everything happened so quickly, I’ve run into a few snafus that the brilliant staff at UW-SP has easily handled.

The first occurred when I paid my $100 registration fee. I didn’t know it at the time, but my payment was registered to someone else – another Scott Steuck who is taking classes at UW-SP. Although I’ve never met this Scott Steuck, I’ve written about him before, as I had an issue in registering for a library card downtown. And now he was unknowingly taking my money.

But when registering for classes, I noticed the student ID number on my registration receipt did not match the one on my class schedule. I pointed this out to the registration person, and she discovered the error and immediately had it corrected.

The other snafu occurred when I tried to register for my second class and the computer told me “undergraduate” students were not allowed to take it. It’s been 14 years since I’ve been an undergraduate, so that was a little confusing to me. When I checked with registration, I learned I was a first-semester freshman, and not a graduate student. While I’d love the opportunity to go back to 1993 and relive my undergraduate days, especially knowing all I know now, that wasn’t something I was willing to do. Again, though, the registration person immediately corrected the issue.

Now the only issues I have to deal with are balancing a full-time work schedule with a part-time school schedule, and a more than full-time family schedule. The last schedule takes precedence over the other two, but both Jennifer and my 6-year-old son, Braden, know I’m going to have to sacrifice some of my free time I usually spent with them on school.

I told Braden that I hopefully won’t forget about him. He said if I do, he’ll slap my face and wave his hand in front of my eyes. Baffled, I asked why. “Because that’s what you do when someone can’t remember something.”

He’s right, making me feel a little foolish that I’m learning something from a young boy when I’m supposed to be learning bigger things at school.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, Sept. 9, 2011.