I am a person who returned to school over twenty years after receiving my BS in Business Administration and declaring I would never go back. After a couple of years climbing the corporate ladder, I started my own business and have been successful in many aspects of mentoring and providing opportunities for both youth and adults to grow in their dreams and aspirations.

I became interested in teaching adults about five years ago when I witnessed my mom graduate with her second Masters degree in Education at 76 years old and continue to teach until last year at 81 years old.

Currently, I mentor aspiring businesses in a non-profit program and look forward to expanding to a college or university environment. Dr. Watkins has inspired me to look further into a PhD program with his comments. I also wrote an article featured in Sista Talk entitled “A Changed Future for the Adult Learner and Teacher, which was a spin off from my experience as and adult learner in the MBA program. http://thyblackman.com/2011/08/25/sheila-agnew-a-changed-future-for-the-adult-learner-and-teacher%E2%80%8F/

In the text: “The Mis-Education of the Negro” Woodson (1933), your article helps me recall this quote: “The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race” (p.xiii).

Four years after declining the invitation to enter the business PHD program free of charge, I started a Tax Practice, then added a Real Estate Brokerage and recently a Registered Investment Advisory Firm.

For more than ten years, I have had an internship program employing high school seniors where they gain hands on experience in business while earning a salary and credit towards their high school diploma.

Many of these students have gone on to graduate from Ivy League schools such as MIT, Tuffs University, Yale, etc. However, many have bypassed college altogether to successfully start and run their own businesses.

The bottom line is that it has to be what you want not what someone else wants for you!