Hello cms39 --

I am going to weigh in on two sides of the issue here. On the one hand, I agree with those who advise that you celebrate your very real achievements. So many of us want a job we LOVE, would love to be captains of our economic fate. So you have achieved something wonderful in that.

Nor is your degree in education anything to dismiss lightly. The skills involved in educating are highly transferable to other areas of life, and I am sure that you apply them in your business and personal life, perhaps without even realizing that you have integrated this knowledge so seamlessly into your life.

I also would say that it is easy to buy into the educational process as a place to get kudos. The goals are clear-cut, the feedback is constant in the form of grades. It's harder to know when we are doing well in other areas of our life. We have to remain alert for customers/clients who thank us, the friends and family who smile. Instead of positive feedback being built into the system, we have to be like bees who gather that nectar of positive reinforcement for ourselves.

Having said all the reasons why it is not necessary to seek out further education as a source of positive reinforcement, I also must say that completing my degrees when I was in my 40s has been rewarding --though not in the ways I thought it would be.

My career as a professor did not work out. I did not get tenure, was fired, lost my health due to the intense stress of the politics of the tenure review process at my school. My beloved had pushed me hard to fulfill his dreams of being Mr. Dr. Professor -- When I couldn't make his dreams for me come true, he dumped me.

I would not tout the professoriate as a profession that one should aspire to. I've known some people who are "built for it." I suspect that the very qualities that make you an entrepreneurial success would not be valued in the professoriate, just as I found that some of my strongest skills -- intellectual creativity and broad-based curiosity -- are not valued in a profession that prizes disciplinarity within narrow ranges of knowledge.

However, I learned things from my studies that I believe have made me a better person. I learned tolerance for my students who struggled to succeed. Everyone in journalism thinks very quickly -- there are multiple daily deadlines after all. My world was one of quick-thinking people. I had to learn ways of helping those who do not process quickly and easily, and patience and respect for them. That is a good thing.

I took courses that enabled me to better understand persuasive communication and public democratic processes, which required deepening my knowledge of history.

I became more conversant with the struggles of minorities, and how the world looks from their perspective. I took courses that enhanced my understanding of global politics, so that I ended feeling like a "citizen of the world."

The colleagial nature of research forced me to be less defensive about my ideas, more willing to benefit from a free exchange of ideas and information.

And all of this, has, in turn, opened up other kinds of employment opportunities that were closed to me before. As I come out of the very long depression that followed losing my job and beloved and home, etc., I am just beginning to become aware of some of these opportunities.

I used to complain to my friends that I'd be 47 when I finished my degrees. To a person they responded, "You are going to be 47 anyway, with or without the degree. Your choice."

I did have financial aid, and I was unemployed, so finishing school was the best economic choice for me at the time, so my case is different from yours, in that respect.

If you want an education so that people will pin a gold star on you, that's not an altogether bad thing, either. I wanted the positive feedback and a better job, but the good things about my education don't have much to do with either of those. The fringe benefits may be there, even if you are not thinking of them.

I wouldn't suggest that you put pressure on yourself to get this education, and sacrifice the things that are working in your life to get it.

But if you want it, it may be worth taking a course here and there as a transient student (not enrolled for a degree) and seeing if you want to take it any further. And investigating, as others suggested, programs that may make it affordable.

Whatever you decide will be just right for you. And you can go back to school at any age. If you decide "not now," perhaps 5 or 10 years from now, the time will be right.

Good luck with your decision.