ADULT LEARNER SHOWS THAT ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

Brittany Borchert knows a thing or two about life changes. She was born in England but moved to a tiny North Dakota town when she was 3 years old.

After graduating from high school there, Borchert married her now ex-husband, who was in the Air Force. Because of his job, they moved around a lot. Amidst the multiple moves, Borchert earned an associate degree in business and then graduated from cosmetology school. She was working as the assistant manager of a hair salon, but after another move, she ended up staying at home with her daughter.

Fast forward to 2016, when Borchert remarried and moved to the Omaha area to live with her husband and blend their families. It was around this time, Borchert realized her passion for the field of human resources.

“I just thought being the person to help employees would be the way I would want to go if I ever decided to go back to school,” she explained. “After looking into it, I realized that to break into the HR world (which isn’t easy to do) I would have to take a massive pay cut and work my way up (which I couldn’t afford to do) or go back to school and finish my bachelor’s degree.”

Borchert shared a story of how one day, her two older kids told her that they better finish college before having kids of their own because you can’t finish college once you have kids. They thought this because of something they overheard someone else talking about. Borchert told them that they could achieve anything even if they became parents before finishing college, but she knew she couldn’t just tell them – she had to show them.

“Them telling me that lit a fire under me, and I enrolled at Bellevue University by the end of the week,” Borchert said. “I had to show them that even though your life hasn’t turned out exactly how you planned, it doesn’t mean that your dreams are impossible to achieve.”

Borchert chose Bellevue University because she wanted to attend a local university with a good reputation that also enabled her to complete her degree fully online. She graduated this past spring with a Bachelor of Science in Management of Human Resources

One of Borchert’s biggest takeaways from her undergraduate experience at Bellevue University was that she’s not the only one.

“What I mean by that is that I wasn’t in the minority by being a working mom in her 30s going back to school to finish my degree,” she explained. “Most of us in my program were people who were ‘older’ and finishing their degrees. Most of us worked full time and had children or had a large gap of time since the last time we were in school.”

Today, she’s found her niche, working full-time as an employee experience specialist for Vensure, one of the nation’s fastest-growing HR outsourcing organizations and relishing her role as a mom. She’s also continuing her studies at the University, working on a Master of Science in Human Resource Management degree.

She also appreciated how supportive all the staff were at Bellevue University.

“Everybody goes out of their way to make you feel like you’re the only person they’re helping, and I think that’s wonderful – especially when it’s really easy to feel like nobody cares about you.”