Reva Cobbs Reflects on her Time at STLCC Non-Traditional Student set to Graduate this May

LYDIA HOWDEN Staff Writer

Saint Louis Community College is home to many students with different goals and academic paths, including Reva Cobbs. She is a nontraditional student here at the Meramec campus. A traditional student typically represents someone who is 25 years old or younger, goes to college full-time, and does not have many responsibilities in terms of work or other things.

Unlike them, Reva attends school part-time, goes to work, and she prefers to take 8-week courses. She is getting her Associates in General Transfer Studies and is set to graduate from STLCC later this spring before going for her Bachelors at Texas Southern University. There, she plans to major in accounting and minor in Spanish.

In her free time, she loves spending time with family because that’s important to her.

“I have a big family,” she says.

She also spends time with friends, reading, and shopping. She considers herself a “sneakerhead,” and so a hobby of hers is to check out the latest Jordans. Her favorite classes at Meramec so far have been anything that has to do with accounting, because she likes “learning the skills you are going to do in your career, that you actually do in your job and that corresponds with what you do every day.”

She has been doing accounting for 15 years now and began when she was 18. Accounting is what she is passionate about. She loves the fact that she can help her friends and family with taxes and that the skills she uses for her job correlate with what she does in daily life. Her long term goals involve getting her Masters degree.

She does not know if she will come

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Proud member of back to Missouri after Texas, stay in Texas, or go somewhere else.

“And that’s the great thing,” she says. “You never know what circumstances might bring you back. You never know what’s going to happen and the people you might meet. I’m excited.”

One day, Cobbs said she wants her own accounting firm, to create jobs for people, and create generational wealth.

Cobbs said that STLCC has been the perfect place for her career growth at this moment. It offers 8 week courses so that she can get her credits in without having to take several classes all semester, and 8 week courses are a great option for those who work as well as having class. She states that STLCC has “done a good job providing the essential tools for success.”

She has not had bad experiences with teachers and she appreciates the staff. She likes that she got to create her own schedules instead of having someone else tell her what classes to take and when. “It takes student insight because every person is different and their lifestyles are different,” she says.

Reva’s advice to students both traditional and nontraditional is to “keep your eye on the end goal. Surround yourself with positive people because negativity will bring you down. You will have days when life is really stressful and hard, and you just have to remember your goals, whether they be an Associates, Bachelors, or Masters degree.”