Apparently, at 45 years old, I have homework again.
Not helping-someone-else-with-their-homework homework. Not signing a permission slip or asking, “Did you finish your homework?” for the seventeenth time.
My homework.
I am currently working toward my MFA in Photography, which still feels a little strange to say out loud. And if you’re imagining me sitting quietly at a desk with a cup of coffee, thoughtfully reading my assignments while soft music plays in the background…
That is adorable.
Going back to school at 45 looks a little different.
There are kids who need things. A husband. A house. A business I’m building. Weddings I’m officiating. People I’m photographing. Laundry that continues to reproduce no matter how many loads I do. School schedules. Appointments. Dinner.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I suddenly remember that I need to photograph “three stages” of something.
Which is how I ended up taking my camera to dinner and photographing a cheeseburger and fries.
Yes.
A cheeseburger and fries were homework.
And honestly, I think that sums up grad school at 45 pretty well.
I See Assignments Everywhere Now
One of the strangest things that has happened since starting this program is that my brain apparently no longer knows how to look at anything normally.
An apple isn’t just an apple.
What if I change the lighting?
What if I photograph it from a different point of view?
What if I change the context?
What if I need FIVE photographs of the same apple that all mean something different?
A wine glass sitting on a table?
Composition assignment.
A cupcake?
Another three-stage option.
A random fence I pass on a morning walk?
Hold on. Don’t move. I need my camera.
I find myself walking around the neighborhood looking at shadows, lines, colors and little pieces of ordinary life that I probably wouldn’t have noticed before.
Sometimes I leave specifically to take pictures.
Other times I just see something and stop.
And I’ve started to realize that might be one of the biggest things school has changed about me.
I’m paying attention.
There Is Also a Lot of Chaos
Going back to school when you’re younger probably comes with its own version of chaos.
Going back at 45 means school has to squeeze itself into a life that was already completely full before it arrived.
There are nights when Lightroom is open, Photoshop is open, my class is open in another tab, photos are importing, something is charging, someone is asking me a question, and I’m trying to remember whether I’ve replied to all of my discussion posts.
Then I’ll remember another assignment.
Or I’ll decide the photograph I already edited isn’t the one I want to submit after all.
So naturally, I’ll edit another one.
And another one.
And then compare them approximately 47 times.
This is probably where I should tell you that going back to school has made me incredibly organized and disciplined.
It has not.
I am still me.
I’m just me with deadlines now.
But Here’s the Part I Didn’t Expect
I knew I would learn photography.
I expected to learn more about lighting and composition. I expected critiques. I expected to learn photographers and history and techniques and all of the things that come with studying something seriously.
What I didn’t expect was how much of my life would end up inside the work.
I’ve spent 45 years becoming the person who walked into these classes.
I’ve been a daughter, a wife, a mother and a grandmother.
I’ve loved people.
I’ve lost people.
I’ve moved.
I’ve started over.
I’ve changed my mind.
I’ve doubted myself.
I’ve created things.
I’ve abandoned things.
I’ve picked things back up.
I’ve lived enough life to know that the smallest objects can carry enormous stories and that sometimes an empty space can say more than a person standing in it.
And all of that comes with me when I pick up my camera.
I don’t think I understood that when I started.
I Couldn’t Have Made This Work at 22
Technically, maybe I could have earned this degree when I was younger.
But I couldn’t have made the same photographs.
I couldn’t have created The Women I Am because I hadn’t met most of those women yet.
I hadn’t become them.
I couldn’t photograph memory the same way because I didn’t have as much to remember.
I couldn’t photograph loss the same way.
Motherhood.
Marriage.
Change.
The strange combination of holding on and letting go that seems to happen more often as you get older.
There are things I understand now that I simply couldn’t have understood then.
And that realization has changed the way I think about starting this at 45.
Because sometimes we look at something we’re beginning later in life and immediately calculate how much earlier we could have started.
What if I’d done this ten years ago?
Twenty?
Where would I be now?
I’ve had those thoughts.
But lately I’ve been thinking about it differently.
Maybe I wasn’t late.
Maybe I needed the life first.
And I’m Still Learning What I Want to Say
That’s probably my favorite part of all of this.
I don’t have everything figured out.
I’m still learning what kind of photographer I want to be.
I’m learning which photographs feel like me and which ones are simply technically good photographs.
I’m learning that those aren’t always the same thing.
I’m learning that sometimes the picture I can’t stop thinking about matters more than the technically perfect one.
I’m learning to take criticism without immediately deciding I am terrible at everything.
Okay.
I’m trying to learn that one.
I’m learning to experiment.
To make weird photographs.
To try something even when I don’t know if it will work.
To photograph apples five different ways.
To drag equipment around my house.
To stop on walks.
To turn dinner into homework.
And somewhere in all of that, I’m becoming a better photographer.
But I think I’m also becoming more aware of myself.
So, What’s It Actually Like Going Back to School at 45?
It’s exhausting sometimes.
It’s chaotic.
It’s exciting.
It occasionally involves staring at two nearly identical photographs for far longer than any reasonable human being should.
It means fitting assignments into the spaces between everything else that makes up my life.
But it also means I get to learn something I genuinely love.
I get to create.
I get to make photographs that didn’t exist yesterday.
And I’m beginning to understand that the 45 years I lived before starting this degree weren’t years I wasted by not doing it sooner.
They are part of the reason I have something to say now.
I don’t know exactly where this degree will take me.
I don’t know what kind of photographer I’ll be when it’s finished.
But I know I’m already seeing the world differently than I did when I started.
And maybe going back to school at 45 isn’t about starting over at all.
Maybe it’s about finally having enough life behind you to know what you want to do with what’s ahead.
Even if, occasionally, what you’re doing with it is photographing your burger and fries before you’re allowed to eat it.
