TOLEDO, Ohio — Hundreds of students from the University of Toledo received their diplomas on a chilly Saturday morning in December.
Among those graduates – a septuagenarian who says getting a college degree is something he's been hoping to do for a long time.
And now, Terence O'Brien is officially a college graduate.
But at 71 years old, the path to his liberal arts degree was one he never could have imagined.
O'Brien’s father passed away when he was just 8-years-old, which, he says, made his childhood “a little rough.”
"I was never the perfect student all the way through elementary school,” said O’Brien.
By the time he reached high school, first at Cathedral Latin in Cleveland and then in public school, he says he “fell flat on his face.”
Disenchanted with school, and with a difficult home life, O'Brien eventually dropped out of school.
He did get his GED however, but college wasn't yet in the cards once he started working at Nighttown restaurant in Cleveland Heights.
Still, the feeling that he’d missed a huge opportunity in his life by not going to college always stuck with him.
"Before I knew it, it was 45 years later of being in the business, kids, dogs, wives, mortgages, car payments. Life, you know,” said O’Brien.
But after decades in the service industry, along with arthritis that comes from a lifetime of hard work, O’Brien said he was presented with the chance to get a college degree.
He started at Lakeside Community College in Kirtland, Ohio before moving on to Lorain Community College.
But even after getting his Associate’s Degree at Lorain, he says he still wasn’t fulfilled. And he still had more energy.
It wasn’t easy though.
As someone who got a late start with computers and online technology, O’Brien started his career at the University of Toledo right when he would need those skills, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
O’Brien says both his professors and classmates helped keep him motivated, however.
A positive attitude helped too.
O’ Brien gives most of the credit for his success to his advisor, Jackie Thompson.
“He was a student that came in and really had a passion for education as a whole and just getting more knowledge,” said Thompson.
She says that despite O'Brien's age, she never doubted his perseverance.
In fact, a bachelor’s degree is just the start for him.
No, he won't be getting a new job, but he is considering going back to school again for his Masters degree, and proving, once again, that it’s never too late to do what you were meant to do.
RELATED: