I want to go back to school. Help me find grants and scholarships.

To paraphrase Hubert Selby, Jr.: you know the alphabet. Maybe you can be a writer. Fuck college. Write a goddamn book. You know what people do in college? The good ones do what they're told and come out saddled with debt and hoping for an internship so they can slave away for some old tool in the hopes of grasping a rust-rotted rung on the corporate ladder. The bad ones fart around on daddy's money and slink back home to take over the family business that they'll run into the ground with bad paper and cocaine before hanging themselves in the garage on Christmas morning. Fuck that. Write. The. Book, Loquacious.

A lot of people in this thread are posting answers based on outdated information. As long as you stick to FEDERAL (not private!!!) student loans, you can indeed keep them in http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/student_guide/2009-2010/english/postponeloanpayment.htm forever as long as you are going to school at least half-time. If you finally get sick of taking classes and racking up degrees, you can then sign up for http://www.finaid.org/loans/ibr.phtml of your loans. Your payments will be limited to 15% of your discretionary income (the difference between your http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjusted_Gross_Income and 150% of the http://aspe.hhs.gov/POVERTY/09poverty.shtml for your family size). Furthermore, if you go into a "public service" career (government, nonprofit, education, or health care), then after 10 years of payments you can have the remaining balance forgiven under the http://www.finaid.org/loans/publicservice.phtml program. None of this is "stealing," it is merely responding to financial incentives deliberately created by Congress. And speaking of things that Congress deliberately decides to spend taxpayer money on -- even if you were to rack up the maximum possible federal student loan debt ($60,000 Perkins + $138,500 Stafford) and never repay it, it would still be insignificant compared to how much the US government spends on http://costofwar.com/ or http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2624110020101026 Wall Street gamblers.

Thanks to all for the brutally honest answers. Here's an update: As a few people have aptly pointed out I'm probably not cut out for grad school and/or tenure track. I don't think I have that color in my parachute - I loathe politics. But historically I tend to float above or around politics, especially when I'm projecting "intense. and physically and intellectually imposing.", but it still makes me itchy to be around the stuff. Since I'm naturally paranoid I pretty much assume everyone is out to get me until proven otherwise, so, there's that going for me as far as tactics are concerned. But I'm no politician. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away. I do actually like libraries and being in them. The idea of spending months/years ferreting out arcane topics and challenging myself to come up with original thoughts about really mundane, boring shit is actually very appealing and satisfying for me. I already do that. I've gone on epic multi-month trawls just to research the history of steel-making and metallurgy, for example. If it wasn't for the dire competition and politics, this part doesn't scare me off at all. I also didn't think that grad school was some kind of sitcom set where people sat around talking about things casually or endlessly or it was in any way exciting or dramatic. Life isn't a TV show. My primary IT support work history is on educational/university campuses, as well as dated a couple of grads and post-docs so I've seen what grad students actually do. I also realize and plan (planned?) to enter via a community college with intent to transfer. I harbor no illusions about walking into an A-list institution as a non-traditional student without a track record - or a sizable bank account. I also realize that if I went for grad school and a doctorate I probably wouldn't get there until I was 45 or so, give or take a few years depending on focus or funding. In the best case scenario. And that's a long time. But my grandma went back and got her Masters at 65 or so, so it's not impossible. So the best option for me seems to be get a damn job or become gainfully self employed. That's already number one on the list and I'm working on it. (And freelancing as I write this. Thanks to a MeFi member who shall remain nameless I'm actually being paid just to write for the first time ever, instead of getting paid to write/edit as an auxiliary function of being in IT or a graphic designer in a marketing department. It's empowering.) So, job. Then I can pick and choose from the educational buffet and try things on for size. Part of the main reason I want to go back to school (possibly full time) is because I'm not even sure what all there is on the buffet. I've never had that experience. I've never sat down with a guidance counselor and explored these things. I have no idea what I might find that I'd just fall into and never look back. I picked journalism or lit as examples because I forgot - for example - that the field of study of communications even exists. Heck, I forgot about philosophy or metaphysics until I was reminded in thread. I have no idea where I might land, because my tastes are so broad I could end up almost anywhere from political science to computer science to molecular biology. Ok, maybe not molecular biology. When I was a kid I wanted to study artificial intelligence, but then I discovered I pretty much hate math and the forced autism of coding - and I discovered the endlessly receding horizon and debate between hard vs. soft AI, and metaphysics - and just how rare and impossible real intelligence is, artificial or not. The more I learned about ontology the more I really grasped how hard true AI really is, and I'm not alone there. Anyway, yeah. Baby steps towards goals. Thanks everyone!

"I wouldn't mind going back to school and staying there. For life. As a career. I really don't care about student loan debt, especially if it can be somehow continuously postponed by staying in school." Before you do anything, get yourself to a financial adviser, because this statement is one of the scariest things I have heard in a long time. As I understand it, even though you can postpone student loan payments by staying in school, all you're doing is postponing your day of reckoning. If you get student loans (Perkins, Stafford), you get a six month grace period after your first four years wherein you don't have to pay anything, but when that six months comes due, you begin to accrue significant increases in interest that you have to start paying off even if you're just taking 6 units somewhere to be a part time student. Plus, if you are in a place where you are actually so broke that you don't pay your taxes, your credit may put you into a new level of hell when it comes to what kind of loans you get once your first four years are done because then all you have access to are private loans and the interest rates on those are astronomical. And even if you declare bankruptcy multiple times, the only way to get rid of student loan debt is to prove that you are absolutely categorically incapable of paying off that debt because you can no longer work due to injury/illness/death. You can not get rid of student loan debt in any other way. Get someone to look at your finances with you and discuss your long term options; you could get bamboozled into taking on new debt you will never be able to pay off, and while higher education is awesome, it is not worth ruining what little credit you have left. Don't be like my classmates, who are 25-30k (and one owes $75k) in debt from college and are now chasing their tails like dogs with creditors and collection agencies on their heels all day, every day. If anything, do what you can to get grants first (that's free money), and then go from there.

I think you underestimate the potential financial impact of going to school and not getting a job at the end of it. If you cannot find a way of paying for this through some combination of grants and scholarships then please, for pity's sake, for your sake, don't do this. To be quite honest, I think you can basically kiss the idea of becoming a tenured professor goodbye. Simply being good enough isn't good enough anymore, because there are dozens of people who are good enough applying for every tenure track position. I'm also told that most academics do some of their best work, or at least the work that sets them up for the rest of their careers, in their twenties and early thirties. You're already past that. The time to pursue a career in academia was a decade and a half ago. So the idea that you can just spend the rest of your life in school strikes me as unrealistic. If you really do want to get some sort of formal post-secondary education, I seriously suggest that you look into community colleges. Not only are they vastly cheaper than their more prestigious counterparts, but they're more likely to be set up to deal with students who are as non-traditional as you are. You'll have night classes, part-time schedules, tons of students in their thirties--and older--and a much greater willingness on the part of the administration to make their programs work for you. Two things to categorically avoid: 1) For-profit colleges. These are worse than useless. They'll provide you with a crap education and a useless degree while charging you only slightly less than a traditional state school. 2) Student loans, particularly in connection with for-profit colleges, but also just in general. If you can't find a way to pay your school through some combination of part-time jobs and grants/scholarships, you really should think about not doing this. You've managed to make it to 36 while basically being broke. Imagine making it to 46 being less than broke, i.e. owing the bank a couple of hundred bucks a month before you can pay rent or buy food. I'm paying over $1000 a month, and even though I'm employed, it massively restricts my ability to just walk out and do my thing. I have got to have a job. As will you, if you get loans. Look, college isn't for everyone. If you've done fine without a post-secondary degree, why spend the money? If you have a clear plan about how college will improve your life and how you're going to pay for it, then by all means, go for it. But if you don't, think long and hard before you mortgage your future for the privilege of reading some books you could have read by yourself.

Have you taken a look at college courses available free online, like http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm or http://oyc.yale.edu/ or others http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses? Not necessarily as a substitute for actually attending college yourself, but as a way to get a feel for what different kinds of classes in different areas are like, what's involved, etc? And I'd also recommend you really think about http://www.metafilter.com/user/112408 about working at a university and getting free classes as a benefit-- obviously finding such a job may be difficult, but if you succeed in getting one, it's a lot easier path to getting your classes paid for then cobbling together various forms of financial aid, especially if it turns out you're not qualified for federal aid because of the Selective Service thing. (Besides, your ability to "write a hell of an essay, give a talk and demonstrate my intelligence and willingness to learn and be scholarly" may be more of a help in getting a job at a great college than it would in getting you into a great college and getting all the financial aid you'll need. You don't need to look just at administrative work, maybe you'll find a professor who needs an assistant and who thinks you're great...) And being able to take classes for free would let you take your time figuring out whether you really want to get an undergraduate degree, whether you would really want to go to grad school... or whether you just want to take a lot of interesting, challenging classes, learn and grow from them, and then move on (debt-free!)

To echo bardic, I'm not sure you really have a clear sense of what an academic career is like. I have a lot of family and friends who are academics -- and even more of them who are former academics. The thing is, the ability to teach, do research, and be intellectually engaged are only a fraction of what an academic career requires. It is an extremely demanding field where -- as the joke goes -- the politics are so brutal because the stakes are so low. This is a nice way of saying that people will stab you in the back over crumbs. The time spent on committees, advising, going to conferences, grant-writing, publishing, jockeying for tenure (if you can even land a tenure-track job, which hasn't been a given for decades) etc. can be overwhelming -- you are never really "away" from work, not during your evenings or your weekends or your summers or your holidays. The lifetime of learning/teaching that I think you envision (and which I envisioned when I went into grad school after college!) doesn't really exist, unless you're independently wealthy and can just pursue various degrees for the sheer love of it. That said: none of this is to discourage you from going to college! I totally think you should, and I think your goals of wanting to develop your critical thinking skills, discipline with your writing, etc. are excellent, and will most certainly serve you well as you move forward in these new chapters of your life. I just don't think it's at all realistic for you to conclude that this means you want to spend a life in academia. Even leaving aside the significant issue of debt -- and it is not something to be taken lightly, no matter what anyone might imply -- academia is a highly competitive, anxiety-provoking world where you don't get a lot of emotional support. I dropped out after my MA not because my writing wasn't good enough (it was) or because I didn't like teaching (I did) or because my endeavors weren't sufficiently intellectual (they were); I dropped out because I just didn't have the mental armor and sheer tenacity to endure a lifetime of the soul-crushing politics. Loq, you have great things to say and contribute. Going to college (and specifically starting in a community college setting might be the ideal first step, as suggested upthread) will certainly help you do those things, and find a field that is best suited for you (what about a rhetoric/writing program?). But one step at a time.

First, again, I worded my statements about loans/debt poorly. I fully intend to "contribute something to society." In many ways I already have, when I've had nothing but basic white male privilege . It's in my nature to want to fix things and contribute. It would be better if I had worded it as "How do I make school pay for itself?" or something. Second - I'm interested in going back to school to develop real intellectual vigor and educational discipline. I haven't firmly decided on Journalism as a major, but I want to get much, much deeper into writing. I want to fill the holes in my spotty and lax self-education that's more of a result of dumb luck and a natural sponge-like ability to absorb knowledge. I want to be able speak with authority, with more clarity and with more rigorous thinking. I want to be challenged. I don't particularly care to re-interpret classic lit in a slightly different way for the Nth time. I don't wish to meander romantically through the works of dead poets. I already do educate myself daily - and it's not enough. I need a framework and structure. I need to be challenged. I need a competitive arena. I want tears, blood and anguish. Part of this is realizing that as much as I love fiction - I'm a terrible fiction writer. I can elaborate, I can tell tall tales that are true, but I'm a awful fiction writer. I like facts, as nebulous and mushy as they can be the more closely one inspects them. I could see myself in technical writing, in journalism in a niche field like science and technology, and I could also see myself getting into serious journalism and reporting about the things that matter in this world, many of them terrible. I realize that traditional journalism has spilled most of what little blood it had left. Thankfully I'm very comfortable with new media and the internet. Naturally, I love the stuff. So who knows where and what fields the future holds for "traditional" reporting in that context. Maybe it means writing for video, or whatever comes next after video. Whether or not it can still be a viable field to pay the bills as a career remains to be seen. Third: besides the desire to be challenged and become more educated - my end goal is to be able to back up the sort of writing, thinking and speaking I already do with conviction and authority. To develop discipline. I don't see school as an escape from reality or a refuge - it has nothing to do with the current economy. I don't automatically assume I can be a professor, but I'm naturally gifted at teaching. Going to school is just something I should have started a long time ago. This is something I've been thinking about for years and years, and very intensely for the last few months. Since I can hang with PhDs and hold my ground in a debate uneducated and come up with original thoughts, what would I be like with an education to back it up? There's a future me, there, that I want very much. Last: This may be too fatalistic for most of you - but considering my current age and past lifestyle choices and personal/family medical history - there's a pretty good chance that debts accrued from a long term graduate education will outlive me. The stress of going to school could kill me outright. I'm totally ok with that. It's a hell of a lot better then sitting around being depressed, smoking pot and whoring around on reddit. Better to die trying then to not try at all.

Before you meet with an admissions counselor, I think it would really help if you thought through your goals a little bit more. You dismiss the plan for "increased earning potential" pretty cavalierly due to your interests in the humanities. I don't think you really understand the purpose of today's undergraduate education - the subject doesn't matter so much. The degree, the implied competence and responsibility that go with that degree, and maybe a nice gpa, are the product of an undergraduate education. Increased earning potential is the entire point of going into thousands of dollars in debt for a bachelors degree. I can tell you that unless you find a rich benefactor who wants to essentially sponsor your education, you are probably going to have to accrue some debt through loans. You are a really smart dude, but grant and scholarship programs for someone in your situation just aren't gonna cut it. Which brings me to my point: goals? If you are just looking to be more educated, why would you go through all of the bullshit and cost that comes with an undergrad education? Why not take courses you are interested in from all over the place, rather than be forced to follow a program that is not going to inspire you? There is a lot of support for non-traditional students like yourself, but I think you have to be a little bit more realistic. Most people don't get to go to school for free indefinitely because they'd enjoy it.