When the Class of 2022 graduated from Georgia Southern University earlier this month, 50-year-old Khristine Clark Hammond was among the excited crowd — not in the stands cheering on her children, but walking across the stage herself.
Although she’d had a nearly 20-year career as an exercise physiologist, health coach, and manager of wellness and fitness programs, she found herself out of work during the pandemic.
“I’d always thought about going back to school for nursing, but because I was making good money and I was comfortable in my position, I didn’t have a huge drive to do it,” she told GSU. “I was also balancing going into debt for more school, and really feeling like I should do it. So, when the pandemic hit and my facility closed, life circumstances helped me make the decision. It was like divine intervention. God pushed me to go ahead and make the decision.”
And so, a month after her milestone birthday, Clark Hammond was awarded her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. She had earned her bachelor’s in biology from Armstrong State College in 1995 and a master’s in kinesiology from Georgia Southern in 1998, but said her return was “a little bit of a culture shock. It was much more challenging than I thought it would be.”
It helped, she said, that everyone was in the same boat, which helped them bond regardless of their ages. That wasn’t the only benefit to attending college now as opposed to the ‘90s.
“Back when I was in school, we didn’t have the internet,” Clark Hammond told Georgia Southern. “I remember one time I procrastinated on a paper, and I had to drive to the Medical College of Georgia to get the resources I needed. Now you can just hop online and find resources and videos to reinforce what is taught in the classroom. As a multimodal learner, this was a significant contributor to my success as a student.”
In February, Clark Hammond will begin working in labor and delivery at Memorial Health in Savannah.
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