At 66 years old, Carmen Long became the oldest graduate of the Montgomery County Community College Class of 2021, proving once again that age is just a number.

“I wanted to quit but I stayed with it and accomplished my goal,” said Long. “I’ll forever be grateful.”

The Liberal Studies major from Roslyn originally decided she wanted to go back to school for a very simple reason: so she could talk to her friend.

“I wanted to go for sign language,” she said. “I have a girlfriend who’s deaf. I wanted to communicate with her. Once I got to school though, it seemed the possibilities were endless.”

Long is a 1973 graduate of Germantown High School. Born in Ambler, she lived the majority of her life in West Philadelphia. She was awarded a full scholarship to run track at Texas Southern University, but was pregnant with her daughter, Ninja (then, 12 years later, her son, Jermaine) and decided not to attend.

After high school, she instead decided to attend a local college, before transferring to the Opportunities Industrialization Center. That’s where she became a certified nursing assistant, or nursing aide as it was known at the time. She began her career dispensing medication at Jewish Educational Vocational Services.

In 1980, she landed a position making baby formula at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She’d work there for the next 22 years until she had the first of three brain aneurysms, which required emergency surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

“I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t see, I had babysitters,” she said. “Then I had a mental breakdown. I was getting better until my neurologist told me I had another aneurysm.”

Four years later, her health began to improve.

In the spring of 2016, she made the decision to go back to school. At first she was apprehensive about becoming a student again for the first time in decades. The first time she stepped on MCCC’s Blue Bell Campus she was in awe, but also felt a little overwhelmed.

“I needed help because I was an older person coming into college. The last time I registered for college was 1973,” she said. “I wanted to run away. I didn’t know what a smart board was.”

At MCCC, she found a mixture of younger students and those closer to her in age on campus. Her classmates encouraged her to stick with it and pursue a degree.

“I wanted my degree and I wanted to learn,” she said. “I used the tutoring center and whatever was available to me. I talked to my advisor. I talked to everybody. It was wonderful to me.”

As a part-time student, Long enrolled in two courses a semester. She gravitated toward learning about the law and human services, because she likes helping others. She also discovered new passions for other subjects too.

“It’s exciting learning earth science and algebra,” she said. “I hated it in high school but I never gave it a chance. In college, it was so vast. I loved it.”

The pandemic brought its own set of challenges, as Long navigated studying online from home for the first time. She leaned on her family friend, Christine Clements, a retired teacher from Upper Dublin School District, to help her stay afloat and finish her degree on time. She also credited MCCC faculty members for their extraordinary efforts to help her succeed.

“I’ve got to say something about my professors. Every professor I had, every advisor, everyone I talked to, they had a hand in me getting my degree,” she said. “It was crazy. I will never forget them ever.”

Now with a degree in hand, Long has started thinking about using her knowledge to help those in her neighborhood and beyond.

“I’m not here for money or my career,” she said. “I just wanted to be able to know what I’m talking about. I wanted to help in my community. Now I have the tools to do that. I want to do something for two days and they’ll pay me. It’s something I can contribute to my legacy.”

This spring, with her family watching, Long accepted her degree on behalf of all students like her who may be older adults, but aren’t ready to give up learning just yet.     

“As an older person, you don’t have to lay down and die,” she said. “We can do some things. I hope my story gives somebody else the incentive and the courage to go back to school too. If she can do it, so can I. I loved it. If we put our minds to it, we can do it."