Jim England

Student

“There’s no magic thing that says 18 is the right age for college. I'm 30, my GPA is 3.7, and the timing is just right for me."

Jim England was not happy about it, but the Nobel Prize didn’t go to Bob Dylan this year. “He’s my favorite poet and he’s vastly underrated because he’s also a musician. I fell in love with him when a girlfriend and I went across the country in a VW bus. She had 35 Bob Dylan tapes, so we listened to him eight hours a day,” he recalls with a chuckle. And there’s probably a longer story about that trip that's just ready to burst into print as Jim studies writing and English at SMC.

“This semester I’m studying English literature from the Romantic to the Modern period, as well as core classes,” says Jim. “I moved out here from Maine because schools here are the best, and if you’ve made mistakes in your education, you can just start over again. My goal is to transfer to Berkeley and get my Ph.D.,” says the young man whose own ‘education’ includes stints as a chef, a dock worker and a chemist. “Ideally, I’ll end up teaching in a college and writing when I can,” says Jim. “There are so many students who aren’t privileged enough to go to universities, and I’d like to reach them because I think they’re more willing to learn. I, myself,” he continues, “never had a black teacher until this semester. And I really like being here where black teachers are represented too.”

Jim says that “diversity in the classroom is one of the things I like best about SMC. But I’ve also had really good professors here who know your name, and I like what they do. And it’s amazing how many classes we have to choose from,” he continues. “This all keeps me pretty busy and I don’t have much of a social life. But I’ve had ten years to do that. And the most fun I have now is in the library.”

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