A Yearn to Learn Prompts Grandmother to Get Her Master s Degree

"Nobody in my family went to college, I just love learning.” That love for learning has continued for all of Janice Jones’ 60 years of life and is culminating with her earning a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Allied Health Sciences (CAHS).

Jones, a 1974 graduate of Courter Technical High School in Cincinnati, which is now Cincinnati State University, was too busy being a wife and a mother to go to college right after high school. "I always did want to go to college, it was my dream,” she says. "I wanted to get a higher education, but with marriage and kids I thought I never would be able to do it.”

Jones’ interest in education prompted her to take college courses from time to time while she was working at what was at the time University Hospital, now University of Cincinnati Medical Center (UCMC). Early in her time working in the billing department at UCMC, she and her colleagues were required to take coding classes.

"After we took the coding classes, it wet my whistle for going back to school,” Jones says. "So I went back to Cincinnati State and got my associate’s degree in health information management and then after that, I thought ‘I might as well go on and work on this bachelor’s degree’, so I enrolled at UC and got a bachelor of arts in psychology.”

Jones, who has four kids and five grandchildren, says she liked psychology and wanted to continue her education but didn’t want to go back and get a doctorate, so she began researching social work. "I started checking out some things and reading up on social work and what social workers do and I thought, ‘wow, that sounds like me.’”

So Jones was accepted in the three-year part-time program in the School of Social Work in CAHS. Being in her late fifties over the course of her studies wasn’t a deterrent at all she says, adding that there were some other students about her age. Plus, she says she enjoys being around the younger students who she plans to get together with after graduation to celebrate what she calls their triumph.

"It feels great, I’m pretty proud of myself,” she says. "A lot of people say ‘you’re crazy going back to school at this stage, when are you going to retire?’ And I’m like ‘retire for what? What am I going to retire for?’ If I want to travel I can take vacation time and travel. I see so many people who retire from work and do nothing and they die, and that’s not me. I still have a lot of life, so I’m going to live it. In the meantime, I’m going to help people, because that’s what I want to do.”