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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Woman tackles college on the fly

WSUV student, 44, balances studies with job as a flight attendant

By , Columbian Education Reporter
Published:
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When Karin Chandler, 44, graduates from Washington State University in May 2015, she will be the first college graduate in her extended family. &quot;You get to reinvent your life.
When Karin Chandler, 44, graduates from Washington State University in May 2015, she will be the first college graduate in her extended family. "You get to reinvent your life. I've made my own rules and forged my own path," Chandler said. Photo Gallery

Although turbulence has threatened flight attendant Karin Chandler’s college path, she has stayed on course.

Chandler, 44, will graduate from Washington State University Vancouver in May 2015 — 26 years after graduating from high school.

“It’s the hardest, most exciting, most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my entire life,” Chandler said. “Academia isn’t always the answer, but it’s the answer for me.”

When Chandler crosses the stage and receives a bachelor of arts degree in human resources, she will be the first person in her extended family to graduate from college. Her dad was an auto mechanic and owned his own shop. Her mom worked in a school cafeteria. But Chandler’s parents have stood behind her decision to go to college.

“They’ve been my biggest cheerleaders,” Chandler said.

As a high school student in Gig Harbor, Chandler didn’t consider college.

“College didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. I didn’t think it was in my realm of opportunities,” she said. “All I wanted to do was work.”

Immediately after she graduated high school in 1989, she entered the airline industry. She started at the ticket counter and worked her way up to flight attendant with Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air.

By her early 20s, she was married and working full time. When her husband quit work, she supported both of them. She started voicing her desire to go to college.

Over the years, Chandler’s husband became emotionally abusive, she said.

“He drove me down for many years,” Chandler said. “He told me I would never amount to anything and that I’d never go to college. It was demoralizing and humiliating. I woke up one morning and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.'”

After 12 years of marriage, she divorced and moved back into her parents’ home in Gig Harbor while she figured out her next steps.

“The only way I could do it was to rise above it, feel better about myself and get an education,” she said. “I didn’t go to school for him. I went for me.”

She spent two years attending the University of Phoenix part time, but the for-profit school didn’t work for her. In 2011, she transferred to WSU Vancouver.

In the beginning, she worked full time and went to school part time. After perfecting the art of juggling her schedule, she works full time and attends school full time. She flies on weekends and takes four classes during the week.

Homework at airports

Chandler does her homework wherever and whenever she has a couple of hours to spare. She’s done homework on layovers at airports in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Seattle, San Diego and San Jose, and at small airports in the Montana cities of Kalispell and Billings.

Sometimes, Chandler knows she will be in the air working and can’t submit her assignments online when a professor has requested it, so she has made alternate arrangements in advance.

When her friends, co-workers and family want to spend time with her, she tells them she has to study.

“The joke is that I’ll see them in May, after I graduate,” Chandler said.

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Along the way, Chandler has made other sacrifices. She drives a 1997 Toyota Camry.

“Sure, I’d like a newer, more reliable car,” she said. “But it can wait.”

Chandler has worked extra shifts to pay for her college textbooks and to purchase a laptop computer for school.

Sometimes she goes straight from the college campus to work, and changes into her uniform at the airport before boarding a plane.

“The hardest part about going back to school has been learning how to study, how to take notes and being comfortable in a school where a lot of the students are half my age,” she said.

Chandler said the age diversity of students is a good thing, but it took getting used to.

“Coming back to school as an adult, I have a lot of real-world experience, but no academic experience,” she said.

Sometimes experience does trump youth, she said. Some of her professors have told her that her 26 years of working in the airline industry dealing with emergencies, stressful situations and customer service will make her a good human resources employee.

By the time she graduates, Chandler’s college debt will total about $40,000.

“My college debt is the one thing that keeps me awake at night,” Chandler said. “Am I going to still be paying on my student loans when I’m collecting Social Security? I am happy to. They’re my loans. My responsibility.”

Forging her own path

“There have been times when I’ve thought, ‘Why am I doing this? I’m too old for this. I’m going to throw my laptop off the balcony,” Chandler said. “But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. … You get to reinvent your life. I’ve made my own rules and forged my own path.'”

She said she believes emotional abuse “happens more often than people are aware. Looking back, academia and my education has been a form of therapy for the emotional abuse.”

In her spare time, Chandler volunteers with Changing Perceptions, an organization that helps those affected by abuse to find their voice again.

“I’m hoping to inspire someone who’s in the position I was,” she said. “If I can inspire one person, then I’ll have done my job.”

Two flight attendants she works with have watched Chandler’s progress and have returned to college, she said.

“If I can do this, other people should be able to,” she said. “You’re never too old to learn. That’s what I’ve learned on my journey. There shouldn’t be any barriers to get an education.”

When Chandler receives her diploma, it will have been a 6-year journey from when she first returned to school.

“It’s been wild. Crazy. Scary. I’ve shed many tears,” Chandler said. “But I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.”

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Columbian Education Reporter