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Graduating at Forty
You’re never too old to learn, but that’s only true to a point.
As someone who only gained my BA degree in my late thirties, then went on to graduate from a Creative Writing MA at the age of forty, I can tell you what graduating later in life is like.
Internships are Not an Option
For many people graduating, they are in a position to do an unpaid or extremely low paid internship. Of course there are always exceptions, but younger people are more likely to live with and have the support of their parents than a forty-year-old graduate.
For me, an unpaid internship was out of the question. I had rent, bills and food to pay for. So, I tried to get around this by creating my own opportunities. I created a quarterly literary magazine to get experience of editing and publishing other authors, spent a few years co-hosting a book review podcast, volunteered as a submission reader with an online press, and took on varied opportunities to gain experience, or created them for myself. While I was doing these unpaid projects, I was working for content mills to earn some money. I learned a lot about content writing and copywriting, barely slept or had much of a social life, but instead of finding better paid opportunities, I got stuck.
