I did the same thing this past fall. I'd been out of school for 15 years with a real job, but the whole time I've been saving money for "some day" when I'd go back. It always seemed far off in the future, and then I got laid off from my job of 9 years. So all of the sudden, bam, I'm a student again. While my old company is going down the tubes (if I am to believe my friends who still work there), I'm hanging out with the co-eds almost half my age every day, hah.
Anyways the first time I was in Aeronautical Engineering at Purdue and I never graduated. 15 years later I found out only some of my credits are going to be counted, and those not counted included all of my calculus, which the first time I passed four semesters of. Which was a good thing because I didn't even remember sines and cosines, let alone any of the calc. So I spent a semester at the local community college retaking stuff I took in high school, then transferred in to Purdue for the fall, this time in Industrial Management (same major as Drew Brees btw).
I actually looked at going into Purdue's flight school, but a) they are only taking incoming freshman, no transfers, b) its really expensive and hard to pay for if you don't have the money yourself, and c) its a really bad time to become a pilot. I actually saw most people recommend that if you can't get a flying gig in the military (and I'm too old so I cannot), its best to get a non-flight degree, get a high paying job, pay for your own flight training at your own pace on the side, and wait for the economy to improve to where there's flying jobs out there again. So that's my plan for now.
The good news is that I had a GPA good enough for Semester Honors last semester, my first back at Purdue. Got an A in Calc 1 (which replaced my A from my first semester freshman year on my transcript... wonder how many people have done that?). Joined a service fraternity where I get to know some of the college kids, most of them don't even guess that I'm over 30 years old when asked to guess my age... obviously none of them have ever had a job checking IDs, lol. I should be done in 4-5 more semesters if I don't screw up, which I don't plan to.
Only bad news is that I kinda wish they would have waited a year and a half more to lay me off, by then I'd have enough money saved for the whole dang thing. Looks like I'm going to be taking a few loans out, maybe the government will even give me money for having zero income this year, I dunno. In any case, I'm glad I got laid off, it was the kick in the pants I needed to finish my degree and move on with my life. Hope it works out similarly for you.
