my.CSMD
Real Story: Jackie Carson
Jackie Carson
CSM Class of 2025, Art
Accolades, Accomplishments, and Highlights: School of Liberal Arts Commencement Student Speaker
I graduated from high school in 1982, and from Emerson College in 1986 – a time that many of you consider vintage.
Why did I earn an associate degree in art at 60 years old?
When I was a kid, my mother loved to make things. Her favorite is sewing, but she also did ceramics, rug hooking, macrame… She even made cool Halloween costumes. One year she transformed my brother Eric into a table complete with place settings.
Watching her, I learned that being creative was fun. I made paper dolls and pipe cleaner people and started drawing.
In college I discovered theater. I built sets, ran crew, and stage-managed shows. I took classes in costume and set design. My favorite class was an independent study in puppetry; for my final, I wrote a puppet show, made all the puppets, and performed it with the help of my roommates.
After college, I worked at a children’s theater at the Smithsonian Institution. In 1993 I was a Park Ranger and then a Park Naturalist for the Maryland National Park and Planning Commission in Prince George’s County. In 2006, I became a full-time stay-at-home mom.
All throughout this, I would find ways to be creative and make things. At the children’s theater, I would create one-page programs for the shows. At the nature centers I led hikes and nature programs for kids and families and created exhibits. Even today, if you go to Watkins Nature Center in Watkins Regional Park, you will see the giant tree in the exhibit hall that I designed and helped build. As a mom, I learned to knit, make quilts, dolls, and sew cool costumes, which helps a lot when your kid wants to be a Therizinosaurus dinosaur for Halloween.
I realized that no matter what job I had, I always found ways to use my creativity and make things. It made me think that maybe I should have gone to art school. So, when my youngest, Alex, was in high school and my oldest, Griffin, went to St. Mary’s College—after graduating from CSM with a degree in graphic design, I thought about finding a drawing class somewhere. My husband Frank said, “You could get a degree in art at CSM.” He’s a smart guy. So I applied.
I’ve really enjoyed going back to college. The teachers are smart, patient, and quirky, especially in the Arts Department.
Some things are very different from those vintage days of the ‘80s, like taking a virtual class and never physically talking to or even seeing the professor; or being able to register for classes without standing in line only to find that class was full and having to go stand in another line. Happily, a lot of my 40-year-old college credits actually transferred.
I also found that being a more mature student had advantages. I take excellent notes—handwritten, of course. Many of my teachers are younger than I am, so I am very comfortable participating in class discussions and asking questions or for clarification if I don’t understand. I even found that some of my classmates appreciated having someone who was comfortable speaking up when they were not.
Earning my degree has helped me improve my drawing and painting skills and to gain more confidence in my artistic abilities.
Here are a few things that I’ve learned in the process.
Do something that makes you happy, no matter your skill level, because if you want to be really good at something, you have to be willing to be really bad at it first. Improvement takes time and patience.
Try to do your best. Things may not work out the way you want them to, but there are a lot of opportunities out there and you don’t always know where they will come from or where they will lead you.
No matter your age, don’t ever think you’re too old to try something new. I’m a 60-year-old college student, but my mom is 87 and still going strong, so I look forward to another 30 years coming to me.
And finally, the plans you have today will probably change in 10 or 20 or 40 years. Maybe even next year.
Whatever your plans, keep learning and always find a way to do something that makes you happy.
Last updated: 5/22/25