Hi, there.

How old is too old to start again?

If someone finishes their BA in 2004 and only starts their MA in 2017, what story do you tell yourself about them?

Most people assume something must have gone wrong.

But nothing really went wrong.

Between those years, I worked in schools, I got married and moved to the UK, then I came back to Brazil and opened a business school. From the outside, it looked like I was moving forward. Inside, I felt like I was circling something I had postponed for too long.

I've always wanted to do an MA in the UK. Not because it sounded impressive, but because I knew I had reached the edge of what I could do with the qualifications I had.

So I applied for the prestigious Hornby scholarship.

The result? I didn’t even pass the first stage of the application. There was no interview, no detailed feedback, just a simple no. At 35, that feels different. You start wondering whether you missed your moment, whether serious academic study belongs to younger people, whether you are trying to stretch beyond your place.

But I applied again the following year and got it. 

Why would someone do that when life is already full, when bills are real, when colleagues seem to be climbing steady ladders?

Because the tension wasn’t between me and the scholarship. It was between me and the timeline I thought I was supposed to follow.

When I finally started the MA at 37, most of my classmates were around 20 years old. Some people might call that late. I never did. I was visiting London when the approval email arrived and I remember standing still on the pavement reading it twice to make sure it was real.

We measure our lives against other people’s timelines and then wonder why we feel slightly off. You scroll, see someone publishing at 28 or finishing a PhD at 32 and your brain goes, "right, so what have you been doing exactly?"
There is always that small, irritating voice saying you are late, like ambition has a best-before date and you missed it.

But what if your path is not late? What if it is simply yours?

Think about that 🙂

P.S.If this resonates and you are in a phase of rethinking your work as a teacher, my community Reflective Teaching Studio opens in May. Apply here: https://tally.so/r/1AWrpW