By Brittany Boles
YourPace Student Contributor
What do a 47-year-old physical therapy doctorate student and a 38-year-old accounting major with a craft brewery have in common? A lot more than meets the eye. For starters, they’re both parents of two, and both are enrolled in college full-time for the first time in more than a decade.
Eddie Michno, a former Coast Guard, is a 38-year-old married father of two, majoring in accounting. He is a small business owner with a craft beer brewery and restaurant, a wrestling coach, and an avid practitioner of jiu-jitsu.
Marie Frehulfer, a single mother of two, is a former small business owner with several professional certifications in addition to a bio-tech degree. Alongside authoring her first book, she is an accomplished endurance athlete and enthusiastic outdoorswoman.
Both millennial students live and work in the rural Lakes Region of New Hampshire, and both cite economic drivers as motivation to return to school later in life.
As a newly divorced single mom, Frehulfer says she needs “to stay in the Lakes Region and be able to survive on the economy here on my own,” and adds, “I feel like everything I’ve experienced has led me to this place.”
Michno says he wants to have another option, “if the restaurant or brewery doesn’t work.” In the Lakes Region specifically, Michno goes on to explain that “if” is just based on trends we’re seeing right now, and the cost of living and everything is hard for people these days to get by day by day.”
Michno credits his wife, Mara, for helping him manage the balance of a full-time college course load with the business, kids, and community obligations. True to his years in service, he also employs good old-fashioned grit: “You just do it. Get up early. Stay up late.”
No stranger to grit herself, Frehulfer also stresses the importance of time management — But her face is infused with joy as she says, “It’s terrifying, but also really rewarding.”
Another thing the pair of elder students share is their pride in being a positive example to their kids. Michno has “a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old, so they think it’s fun to see me doing schoolwork.” He wants to show them what it’s like to “stay in that learning environment” with constant improvement; he says, “it’s cool.”
“I’m educating my children to do things differently,” Frehulfer concurs. Her return to school is as passionate as economics, and she knows “it’s the right decision.”
