No one will think you’re weird or strange. It’s college. Age doesn’t matter anymore.
A lot of high school grads join the military and spend several years serving before they start college.
Some high school grads join the Peace Corps or other “missionary” or “humanitarian” organizations and then go to college.
And some simply take a year off to work and do some soul-searching.
A lot of students take a year or two away from college after they start because of a family tragedy or event, because they run out of money, because they have a travel opportunity (e.g., joining a touring ice skating show), etc. Then they come back older. It’s OK.
In college, there is always a mix of ages in the classes. Although many students try to get their gen ed classes out of the way in the first two years, my older daughter spread them out. So in her senior year, she was taking a religion class that was full of freshman. (She had fun–since she was older, she was able to shred a lot of their arguments. I know, it doesn’t sound nice, but sooner or later, people have to grow up and stop answering the hard questions with kids’ answers. She just forced them to do this sooner.)
And a lot of women and men return to school after having their children, so you’ll see at least a few 40, 50,60, and even 70-somethings in your classes.
Don’t worry about age.
One thing you can do is take class overloads, do summer classes, and finish college early. Or you can finish college early if you earned AP credits in high school. (My older daughter graduated a semester early–saved a lot of money in tuition bills.) But this is kind of hard, depending on your major. Leaves you very little time for anything except studying. But if finishing by a certain age is important to you, it can be done.
WARNING!–many colleges try very hard to get you to stay an extra year. Some colleges don’t counsel you well when you first start as a freshman, so you don’t realize that you are behind on your major until it’s too late, and you end up staying an extra year. One of my friends had eight children, and one of his daughter attended a college that tried to do this to her. They told her that she couldn’t take 18 hours a semester, but only 12 so that she could have more social opportunities.
HE told them point-blank that his daughter WOULD graduate in 4 years, and that if they didn’t allow her to take the 18 hours, that she would graduate from ANOTHER college, not theirs. He said he didn’t have the money to pay for 5 years instead of 4.
They let her take the 18 hours.
So watch out for this trap.
The only thing I would worry about is that the longer you stay away from school, the scarier it gets to go back. You are afraid that you’ve forgotten everything you learned in high school and that you will struggle with the academics. So my advice is–one year (unless you’re in the military or have some other good reason for staying away longer than a year). Just ONE year, then go to school. DON’T put it off and get too scared to go back–unless you happen to strike it rich, perhaps by inventing something or starting a home-based business that catches on., e.g., the Crocs decorations business. Then you can stay away from school longer!
Good luck to you. Have a fun year, whatever you decide.
