VIDBE-Q 2026 Volume 71 Issue 1
was a remote program - so I wouldn't have to relocate (which was completely out
of the question at my age).
Finally, many of my concerns regarding the financial cost of another degree
were addressed by the available grant programs (e.g., the RSA grants) that would
reduce the tuition costs substantially. Since I wasn't working, this was an
important consideration. If I completed the program and worked in the vision rehab
field for a period of years post-graduation, the RSA grants would allow service-
related forgiveness. If I didn't complete the program for some reason or didn't
work in the field of vision rehab, the grants would come due. No pressure…
While enrolling in another graduate-level program after a nearly 40-year
hiatus from academia seemed to fall somewhere between blind ambition (pun
intended) and lunacy - it felt like the right thing to do.
After some soul-searching and discussions with my wife, I enrolled in the
M.Ed. in Vision Studies in Vision Rehab at UMass Boston. In retrospect, I feel I
was a bit clumsy at first – but I believe that was primarily because I hadn't been in
a formal educational environment in nearly four decades. I quickly realized that I
would need to apply some of my acquired organizational skills from the business
world to perform well. My biggest challenges involved the significant amount of
reading required, and in attempting to comply with academic style writing (e.g.,
APA) – which after spending four decades communicating successfully in the
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