Maybe I Wasn’t Overthinking It: What Returning to College at 38 Years Old Taught Me About Bias, Power, and Institutional Barriers

 

Coming back to college after a nineteen-year hiatus has taught me far more than what appears in a syllabus.

I did not return as an eighteen-year-old trying to determine what I wanted to become. I returned as a mother, entrepreneur, community professional, and business strategist with almost two decades of experience in entrepreneurship, business development, workforce development, and economic development.

I came back because I wanted language, education, research, and credentials to deepen work I had already spent years doing.

What I did not expect was for higher education itself to become one of my greatest case studies.

Over the past year, I have learned something that now influences how I think about economics, community development, institutions, and the future work I want to do in regional and spatial planning:

A system can technically exist for people without actually functioning well for the people it was created to serve.

That distinction has changed the way I see almost everything.

When Experience Finally Gets a Name

Before returning to school, I already understood discrimination.

I understood when something felt unfair.

I understood what it felt like to enter spaces where expectations, communication styles, or assumptions did not always account for who I was or what I carried into the room.

What education has given me is better terminology.

Concepts such as implicit bias, intersectionality, cultural humility, power differentials, structural barriers, equity, and systemic inequality gave me a framework for analyzing experiences that I previously might have only described as:

"Something about this doesn't feel right."

That matters.

Language gives us the ability to separate emotion from analysis.

Instead of automatically assuming every uncomfortable experience is discrimination, we can ask better questions:

What actually happened?

Was there a pattern?

Who had decision-making power?

Was the policy applied consistently?

Did different people experience the same process differently?

What institutional structure created the outcome?

And, perhaps most importantly:

What could have been designed differently?

That last question is where my professional interests begin to intersect with my lived experience.

Equality Is Not Always Equity

One of the clearest lessons I have learned as a nontraditional student is that treating everyone exactly the same does not necessarily mean everyone has been served equitably.

An eighteen-year-old first-year student and a thirty-eight-year-old professional returning to school after nearly two decades may both need academic advising.

But they may not need the same kind of advising.

One student may need help discovering career possibilities.

Another may already understand her career direction but need help connecting prior experience, transferred credits, academic programs, professional opportunities, research interests, and graduate-school preparation.

Providing both students the exact same checklist may technically be equal.

But equity requires understanding the person standing in front of you.

This principle extends far beyond education.

Institutions Design Systems

Universities design advising systems.

Governments design transportation systems.

Cities create zoning and land-use policies.

Workforce agencies design employment programs.

Hospitals design healthcare delivery systems.

Financial institutions design lending systems.

Economic-development organizations design business-support systems.

Social-service agencies design systems intended to help families survive crises.

Every one of those systems involves rules, processes, people, resources, and decisions.

And every one of them eventually reaches a human being.

That is why I keep returning to a simple idea:

Institutions design systems. Systems determine access. Access shapes opportunity. Pasted markdown

A resource may exist, but can people reach it?

A program may exist, but do people understand how to navigate it?

Transportation may exist, but does it reliably connect residents to employment?

Businesses may exist, but can they access procurement opportunities and larger markets?

Schools may exist, but are students receiving the guidance necessary to understand what is possible?

Healthcare may exist, but is it geographically and financially accessible?

Economic growth may be happening, but are the people who already live there actually participating in it?

These are no longer abstract questions to me.

They are becoming the questions that shape my career.

Why Lived Experience Matters in Planning and Development

As I continue my education in economics, community and family development, and eventually regional and spatial planning, I am becoming increasingly interested in the relationship between people and systems.

Planning is not merely about buildings.

Economic development is not merely about attracting companies.

Community development is not merely about creating programs.

The real question is:

How does the system function for the people who actually have to live inside of it?

That includes the mother trying to reach work without reliable transportation.

The entrepreneur trying to move from storefront sales into institutional procurement.

The student trying to navigate an academic institution she does not fully understand.

The senior trying to reach healthcare.

The family trying to remain housed.

The worker trying to obtain childcare.

The neighborhood trying to attract investment without losing the people who gave the community its identity.

The business district trying to remain locally rooted while participating in a larger regional or global economy.

Those experiences are connected.

They are questions of access, geography, economics, infrastructure, policy, institutions, and human capacity.

That is where my interests increasingly meet.

People Experience Policy Before They Know Its Name

One thing I have become fascinated by is how ordinary people experience planning and policy long before they ever learn the professional terminology.

A resident may never use the phrase spatial inequality.

They may simply say:

"Everything good is on the other side of town."

A parent may never discuss transportation accessibility.

She may simply say:

"I can't take that job because I can't get there."

A business owner may never discuss regional supplier capacity.

He may simply say:

"Nobody ever told us how to get those contracts."

A student may never use the term institutional barrier.

She may simply say:

"I keep asking for help and nobody answers me."

The professional language matters because it helps us research problems and design solutions.

But we should never become so educated that we stop recognizing what those concepts look like in people's everyday lives.

That is one of the lessons I want to carry with me into every room where decisions are made.

My Career Is Becoming Less About Helping People Navigate Broken Systems

For much of my professional life, I have helped people navigate systems.

I have helped entrepreneurs navigate business development.

I have helped people navigate programs.

I have created resources, partnerships, workshops, and strategies.

I have worked around gaps because that is often what community professionals learn to do.

But my questions are changing.

I am becoming increasingly interested in:

Why does the gap exist in the first place?

Who designed the system?

What assumptions were built into it?

What economic consequences does it create?

Which populations experience the greatest burden?

How do land use, transportation, housing, education, healthcare, workforce, business development, and public investment interact?

And how can those systems be redesigned to work together?

That is the direction in which my education is taking me.

Not away from entrepreneurship.

Not away from families.

Not away from community development.

Not away from economic development.

But above them enough to see how they connect.

From Business Development to Regional Capacity

I have spent years thinking about individual businesses.

Then I began thinking about business ecosystems.

Then communities.

Then economies.

Now I find myself thinking about places.

What makes a region capable of producing sustainable opportunity?

What allows households to remain stable?

What helps locally rooted businesses participate in larger supply chains?

What infrastructure allows people to reach opportunity?

What institutions develop human capital?

What policies encourage investment without erasing community identity?

What allows wealth generated within a region to circulate and remain there?

I have begun describing this larger question as Regional Economic Capacity.

Not simply:

Did the economy grow?

But:

Did the place become more capable?

Are its families stronger?

Are its businesses more competitive?

Are its institutions more effective?

Can residents reach education, employment, healthcare, commerce, and recreation?

Can businesses participate locally, regionally, nationally, and globally?

Can the community withstand disruption?

Can people build wealth there?

Can future generations thrive there?

Those are the questions I want to spend my career helping answer.

Education Did More Than Give Me Information

One of the most valuable realizations from returning to college has been understanding that education does not only teach you new information.

Sometimes education gives you language for something you already knew intuitively.

I knew systems affected people.

I knew access mattered.

I knew some communities had resources that others did not.

I knew businesses needed more than motivation to grow.

I knew families could work incredibly hard and still be constrained by the environment surrounding them.

What I did not always have was the language to connect:

economics, institutions, geography, policy, power, households, infrastructure, business, and opportunity.

Now I do.

And that changes how I intend to serve.

The Question I Want to Keep Asking

As I continue growing academically and professionally, I do not want to become someone who sits behind a desk, creates a technically beautiful plan, and assumes that because the system makes sense on paper, it will work for everyone.

I want to continue asking the questions that lived experience taught me to ask:

Who is being served?

Who keeps getting stuck?

Who has access?

Who has decision-making power?

Who benefits economically?

Who carries the burden?

What does this decision look like at the household level?

What does it mean for businesses?

What happens to this community twenty years from now?

And:

How can we design this better?

My earlier reflection described wanting to become the professional who asks who is served, who gets stuck, who holds decision-making power, and who has to work harder to navigate systems supposedly created for everyone. Pasted markdown

That is still true.

But today I understand something else.

Those are not only questions about fairness.

They are questions about good planning, good economics, good governance, and effective development.

Full Circle

I came back to college for a degree.

What I am receiving is something much larger.

A vocabulary.

A research agenda.

A professional direction.

And an increasingly clear understanding of how people, place, institutions, economics, identity, and systems intersect to shape opportunity—the same realization at the center of my original diary entry. Pasted markdown

My work has always been about helping people move forward.

What is changing is the scale at which I am learning to think.

I am no longer interested only in helping people navigate systems.

I want to understand how those systems are designed.

And eventually, I want to help design them better.

People. Places. Progress.

— Xave D. Morgan
Socially aware. Economically grounded. Purposefully building what comes next.