Two years ago, when I told people I was applying to go back to graduate school, people would sometimes tell me how “brave” I was.

I appreciated the compliment, but I never thought it was particularly true. I was more lucky than brave. Unlike a lot of people in their 50s, I was in a position to roll the dice; I had no real obligations, other than some financial ones that weren’t really onerous. I was single, my kids were older and didn’t really need me anymore and, while I loved my job, I was looking at exchanging it for something I knew I’d love as much. “Bravery” implies that there would be some risk in the decision and the risk was actually minimal; the only real downside was that I could flunk out and I was reasonably sure that wasn’t going to happen.

So, on the morning I left Fargo-Moorhead, it was all sunshine and roses – well, not roses, since it was January – and I could look forward to a real adventure. It was an amazing feeling.

Now, a year and a half later, I’m closer to the adventure’s end than its beginning. And it’s been an amazing ride, in so many ways. I’m in the last leg of the journey. The upcoming semester will be taken up with researching and writing my master’s thesis, so I’m basically done with what most people would recognize as the conventional “school” portion of graduate school. I won’t be sitting in any more classrooms (except for the class I teach as a teaching assistant). It’s basically going to be all homework.

And that’s fine; I’m ready to do what the last three semesters have been preparing me for.

But it’s been great good fun to look back on what a learning experience it’s been. College certainly ain’t the real world, and I had been briefly worried about that, but it’s been refreshing to discover the ways in which that’s a good thing.

Probably the biggest difference between this experience and the real world – and this is something that can be scary if you’re not prepared for it – is that for the first time in many years, my success or failure is entirely my responsibility. Out in the real world, if the boss doesn’t like the way you look or you have a vicious co-worker or somebody else screws up and blames you, your career can be derailed for reasons you really can’t fight.

But here, the only thing I have to fight is my tendency toward procrastination and laziness. It’s on me. And my age, with its attendant lack of third chances (I count this as a second chance) has been a great motivator to get things done.

The other happy lesson I learned was that I could deal with a workload that can only be described as brutal. A classmate and I were talking the other day and she put it in terms I hadn’t really thought of; it’s not really harder than undergraduate college work, but it’s more intense. The amount of reading is amazing. I think in my case it helps that I had some professional experience. I actually found the stuff interesting, because it spoke to experiences I’d had over a 30-year career. I could relate. In fact, I often felt like kind of a nerd, because I’d be fascinated reading things that would put any normal person into a deep coma.

And of course, if much of my experience has been shaped by my status as an older student, it’s been great good fun to hang out with people who are half my age or younger. To a person, my classmates have been wonderful. I’ve made some great friends. Although I’m temperamentally much closer to them than may people my age (some would call it immaturity), I had some slight fear going in that I would be the odd man out. Hell, as I often tell them, I’ve got neckties older than they are. But they’ve shown a great deal of respect for my experience and my ideas and that’s been wonderful. It probably helps that I offered them a deal: I told them that if I ever came off like the know-it-all older student, whoever could get to me and kill me first would get whatever remained of my financial aid.

And, speaking of that know-it-all older student, I like to think my experience here has been helped by a certain amount of humility on my part. I know a lot about journalism, but I recognize that there’s just as much I don’t know. And that’s not just a matter of the technology, which is light-years ahead of where it was when I started in the business. Ideas have moved on as well, and learning new ideas is always exciting. While I’ve had a moment or two when I’ve given a “well, back in my day” speech – we were talking about the Internet one day and I realized I was the only student in the class who remembered the time before it existed – I’ve usually only done that when it was germane to the discussion. After all, I’m not here to sermonize to my classmates; I’m here to learn from them, and my professors, and I’ve learned much more than I ever could have had I not kept my mouth shut.

So, while my time here is closer to its end than its beginning, and I still have much work to do, it’s been a truly amazing experience. If you ever get a chance to do it (and you really want to) I highly recommend it. I feel more alive than I have in years and a chance to feel that is not something anybody should pass up.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, once said there are no second acts in American lives. Fitzgerald may have been one of the greatest wordsmiths ever, but he was dead wrong about that. In fact, if you’re lucky and aware, the second act can be much better than the first.

And that’s been the best lesson I’ve learned.