I submitted my first college assignment at 1:47 AM on a Tuesday. I'd spent the previous fourteen hours on calls about fiber routes, tower leases, and a contract dispute that was going nowhere. Then I closed my laptop, opened it again, and wrote a paper about organizational leadership for a class at Southern New Hampshire University.
Nobody told me to do this. Nobody required it. Nobody was standing over my shoulder with a checklist of credentials I was missing. I just — did it.
And people have had opinions about that ever since.
The Part Where People Get Confused.
I run a telecom company. I run multiple businesses, actually — telecom, IT, real estate, a nonprofit, a publishing imprint. I've built a career with real revenue and real employees and real problems that don't care whether I have a diploma hanging on the wall. I've sat across from people with MBAs from schools that cost more than my first car and held my own just fine. I've hired people with degrees and fired people with degrees and promoted people without them.
So when people find out I went back to school, the first question is always the same: why?
And I get it. On paper, it doesn't make sense. I'm not doing this for a promotion. No HR department is holding a credential over my head. I don't need three letters after my name to get a meeting or close a deal or build something that works.
I went back because I wanted to. That's it. That's the whole reason.
I know how unsatisfying that answer is for people who need everything to be strategic. I don't care.
I didn't go back to school to prove anything to anyone else. I went back to close a loop that's been open for too long.
It's Not About the Paper.
Here's what I actually mean when I say I wanted to: I wanted to prove — to myself, not to LinkedIn, not to a hiring manager, not to some imaginary panel of judges — that I could do this. That the version of me who didn't finish the first time around isn't the final version. That I could run companies during the day and study at night and still perform at a level that actually means something.
President's List. Three consecutive Honor Rolls. Those aren't participation trophies — SNHU doesn't hand those out because you showed up and submitted something. I earned them while running a workload that makes most people's heads spin. Not bragging. Just stating a fact that I refuse to be quiet about.
Because here's the thing people don't tell you about success without a degree: you can be proud of everything you've built and still carry this low-grade feeling that you left something unfinished. It doesn't go away just because your business is doing well. It sits there. Quietly. For years.
Going back was about silencing that.
The Midnight Student.
Nobody tells you about being a working adult in college. The hardest part isn't the material — I've dealt with harder problems before lunch on a bad Tuesday. The hardest part is the schedule. The constant negotiation between what needs your attention right now and what can wait another hour. The guilt of knowing there's always something you should be doing for one of the other things in your life.
My classmates are — in many cases — half my age. Some of them are doing this for the first time, straight out of high school, figuring out what they want to be. I'm doing this after building what I want to be, and going back for the thing I skipped along the way.
There's something humbling about that. And I mean humbling in the real way — not the way people use it on LinkedIn when they actually mean "look at me." I mean sitting in a virtual classroom and being a student again. Being evaluated. Turning in work and waiting for someone else's judgment. When you run companies, nobody grades you. The market does, eventually, but there's no red ink, no rubric, no "here's what you could improve." School gives you that structure. And I was surprised by how much I'd missed it.
the time I submitted my first SNHU assignment. After fourteen hours of running a telecom company. I got an A.
The Stigma Nobody Talks About.
There's a weird thing that happens when you go back to school later in life. People either think it's inspiring — which is fine but kind of condescending if we're being honest — or they think you're admitting you were missing something. Like going back to school is a confession that you weren't enough without it.
Neither of those is accurate.
I wasn't missing anything. My career speaks for itself. But a career isn't the only thing that defines you, and the absence of a degree doesn't prove you're dumb any more than having one proves you're smart. I've met plenty of credentialed people who couldn't solve a real problem if it was on fire in front of them. I've met people without any formal education who could run circles around a boardroom.
Education is something I wanted for me. For the experience of learning in a structured way again. For the discipline. For the uncomfortable feeling of being bad at something before you're good at it — something I hadn't felt in a long time because I'd built my life around the things I was already good at.
Going back to school at my age isn't a flex. It's a reckoning with the version of myself I left behind.
This Isn't a Ted Talk.
I don't write this stuff to be motivational. I'm not going to tell you to "chase your dreams" or "bet on yourself" or whatever platitude is trending on Instagram this week. I hate that stuff. It's empty.
But I will say this — if there's someone reading this who didn't finish school, who built something anyway, who carries that quietly, who wonders sometimes if it still matters — it does. Not because the world requires it. Because you do. And you don't owe anyone an explanation for going back.
I've got more terms ahead of me. More papers to write at one in the morning. More nights where I'm half-asleep and fully caffeinated and wondering why I signed up for this on top of everything else. But every time that grade comes back, every time I make the list — I know exactly why.
The kid who didn't finish deserves to see it through. That's not inspirational. That's just honest.