Slater, Iowa mom and accountant Kathy Vitzthum will graduate from Iowa State University next month--after 40 long semesters of course work.
Vitzthum began taking one class a semester back in 1992, when her boss said he would promote her to accountant from her receptionist job if she took some accounting courses. Caring for her grade-school aged children and holding down a full-time job left Vitzthum little time to study. The math courses were particularly frustrating, she says, as much of her knowledge in that field had disappeared after high school.
But Vitzthum explains that she kept going largely thanks to a promise she made to her father before he died--and because of her very supportive boss, whose company helped pay her tuition at first.
"Throughout all of this my father got terminally ill with cancer and there were eight kids in our family and they always gave us a gift for graduation," she tells The Lookout. Her father asked her if she had thought about finishing her college degree, even though she already had completed the accounting courses she needed for her promotion. "I said 'Dad I'll be fifty years old, I can't go to school when I'm fifty years old.' And he said, 'You're going to be fifty anyway.' "
She agreed to keep going with her education, and her father gave her the big graduation gift--an antique cabinet--early, because he knew he wouldn't be alive by the time she finished school. "I'll give this to you on loan until you finish," she recalls him saying. "It's not yours until you're done."
"Everytime I looked at it, I said 'I have to finish,' " she told The Lookout.
Eleven years later, she said she finally feels like she owns it. She also said that 19 years wasn't as long as she feared.
"I really had a goal in my head: I didn't want to be 50 [when I graduated], and I'm only 48!" she said.
Vitzthum said that going back to college as an adult is hard work, but worth it. "It was absolutely scary for me," she says. "You're just going to have to face your fears and don't be afraid to do it."
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