Driven to earn a degree, age aside

“I think these kids would do pretty much anything for me,” explains Sandra Tassone. “Like the other day, it was raining, and one of them insisted on running to my car to get my books. ‘Let me do that,’ he said, because he didn’t want me to get wet.”

It might not seem like much to the average person, but to Tassone it’s a benchmark for how far she’s come. She has returned to university at Guelph-Humber after a 20-year gap in her studies. In her 20s, she did two years of applied geography at Ryerson University, but she quit the program when she got a job as a law clerk in a downtown law office.

“I never went back,” she says, “and it was a huge mistake.”

Instead, Tassone kept working, got married, and started a family. When the marriage ended, she found herself raising three kids, aged 8 to14, and working in the Rexdale Community Hub on a local United Way project. To say she was financially stressed would be an understatement.

“It was quite dire,” she says.

So Tassone started looking into the Ministry of Education and Training’s Second Career funding program, which allows students to return to school in sectors with high job demand, and Tassone found a high-demand sector in which she’d had some experience: law.

She fast-tracked through Humber’s law clerk program and, after graduating in April, has now started the Justice Studies program at Guelph-Humber. Her goal is to work in a legal advisory role in the future, preferably for the federal government.

But for now, it’s all school, all the time. Tassone is studying full-time — meaning she’s pulled herself away from the usual furthering education demographic in part-time night classes. She’s entered the mainstream of students at Guelph-Humber, making her “at least 20 years older than any other student,” she says, but the age gap is invigorating.

“I’ve really developed my own comfort level here,” she says. “I’ve even become quite the celebrity. I find I mesh quite well with the students I work with and am in class with. I remind them all the time about the opportunity they have and check up on them. There’s a component of me that’s always going to be a parent, wherever I am.”

She fulfills that role in an unofficial way for Guelph-Humber, too, working part-time as a computer support assistant, helping students with general IT questions in the college’s open-plan study area and supporting the faculty with computer problems.

“I love being here. I can’t say that enough,” Tassone says. “I think the majority of that is not only that I’m educating myself, but the students, the faculty, and the staff at both schools. It’s my own little world. I have security, I have some notoriety here for sure, there’s a lot of praise.”

The praise, from all around her, has helped Tassone settle into her accelerated studies and into her role as campus “mom.” She says she’s adopted many of the students and built special relationships with them that she’ll maintain for the rest of her life. But ultimately, it’s her own kids she’s back in school for.

“The biggest driving force for me is my children,” she says. “I want to show them there’s no excuse in trying to obtain proper education. You can complete it regardless of age or financial situation.”