Adult Going Back to School
Being a breadwinner and an adult student at the same time — welcome to parenthood.
By Natasha Zeng
For the past two years, Shawn Hudak, a Huntington University’15 communication studies graduate, felt a little weird on his way going back to school.
“Everybody who sees you walking by thinks you’re a faculty,” said Hudak.
Hudak is an adult student. However, most HU students would recognize his as Jeff Lehman, Ph.D., professor of computer science.
“I got Lehmaned so many times that I invented that word simply so I could describe the experience,” Hudak said. “I never actually met him until two days before graduation. Up until then, the only thing I knew about him was that he was, apparently, a very handsome man.”
But that was not Hudak’s only struggle. After a lot of sincere prayers, Hudak decided to come back and finish his degree, which he started back in 1988.
“I felt that I was being called to TESOL [Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages], ” Hudak said. “And I knew that a bachelor’s degree in a related field would really amplify my TESOL certificate.”
Hudak has three kids. Everyday, he would come home and share tidbits from the day’s lessons with them around the dinner table. Sometimes his kids ate it up and sometimes they just rolled their eyes and endured it. However, keeping a balance between family and study was still a learning process for Hudak.
“At the beginning, I didn’t manage it well,” Hudak said. “My family got the short end of the stick as I readjusted to school life. By the time I was done, I had reversed that trend. I learned to make my studies secondary, and I eventually stopped pulling all-nighters.”
Hudak admitted during his last final’s week, he took exam without studying, which was a first.
“I literally said yes to my kids every time they asked me to do something with them regardless of what I had going on in school,” Hudak remembered.
Just like other college students, Hudak was first overwhelmed by the coursework. He was on Ritalin as a young boy and he described the way he reads and writes was at a “prohibitively slow rate.”
“My study life at HU is a tale of two Shawns,” Hudak recalled. “Back in my sophomore year, I lost focus as I began to realize that I didn’t know what I wanted in life. I really coasted that year. This time around, I knew what I wanted and had a better idea about what was important.”
Hudak also gained a different spiritual outlook when he came back to HU. He’s glad to see that professors don’t single him out in class and even show an interest in his life.
“This time I approached my course schedule with the understanding that each class was chosen in advance by God because there was some way in which He knew I would benefit from it,” Hudak said. “This meant that I would give my best effort in every class.”
In spring 2015, Hudak presented his research at the annual Academic Research Forum, where he got great feedback from the audience. His topic was “Do Women Prefer Sexism? Rating Traditional Sex Roles.”
“I really enjoyed the Academic Research Forum where I got to present my study on sexism that I had prepared under Dr. Rowley,” said Hudak.
As for the next step of his life, Hudak has been accepted to HU’s Excel program to pursue his masters of education in TESOL, starting in fall 2015.