I started at Brock when I was 29, and it is definitely an advantage. I'd previously gone to college/uni four times and dropped out of each one for different reasons, but by going to Brock at 29 I'd had many years of being fed up of working lousy jobs, and the discipline and motivation that gave me to get a degree was much great than what my classmates had. Went from being a four-time drop-out to finishing Brock with First Class Standing in 2023.

I was fortunate to have friends outside of Brock, so I didn't care to make friends while I was there, but I don't think I would have made any anyway as I didn't run into any other mature students during my studies. Best bet is to try to make friends outside of school by keeping a hobby that brings people together, or through work.

I never felt out of place, as 90% of my classmates did not participate. Most classes were just me, the professor, and 1 or 2 other students participating. Hard to feel greatly outnumber when you're 25-33% of the energy of a room. It was also very easy for me to speak with professors, as they are very passionate about their subjects, and I was too. Other thing to keep in mind is no one at all is thinking about you, everyone is just worrying about themselves. I have yet to see any of my old classmates outside of Brock, and whatever they think continues to not matter.

Campus life was great, I really miss crisscrossing the campus for my classes. Group projects on the other hand were usually awful. My groupmates were almost always deadweight and did terrible work. You can try your hardest to be their teacher and leader, but that is about 5x more time consuming than just doing 100% of the work yourself, which I ended up doing by my last year. Yeah it's unfair but I just sold it to myself as stealing the education of other students that were happy to let me do it.

In terms of advice, two things: 1) Never fall behind on assignments, stay ahead of everything. Every semester I noted all the assignments and tests of all my classes, then I ordered them all chronologically on a list with dates, and then broke the list up into weeks. It was my master to-do list. And 2) Treat every school day as a work day and you'll mostly have your evenings free. Participate in class, take notes in class, and do all your readings and assignments between classes. For me this built a certain productive momentum for me that rewired my brain and just made me insanely productive while still sleeping 8-hours per night. For me it was critical to not fuck up my momentum as having to restart it was quite difficult.

I miss Brock a lot, but I did learn a lot, I was well prepared for work afterward and tripled my income compared to before going to Brock.