“I am a non-traditional student because I have health problems. I have cancer, and really I’ve come a long way.”  

James Rich is a student at Colorado Mesa University (CMU). Majoring in Film, Animation and Motion Design, Rich is also part of KMSA, the campus radio station.  

Rich has Crohn’s disease and colon cancer, which he’s lived with for a large part of his life. Now 35, he was only 12 years old when he got Crohn’s disease.   

“It wasn’t until I was 27 that [the doctors] figured out that [I had] Crohn’s disease. If they had figured it out earlier, they would have maybe been able to fix it, but it had manifested into colon cancer [by then],” Rich said.   

Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Rich left home at age 13 due to a complicated home situation.   

“I left home so I was doing it on my own, trying to work full time and finish high school. And I did. I got my diploma. [I was] working full time paying my own bills, so it was just hard for me to afford going to a doctor and figuring it out over the years. I was young and stupid too so I wasn’t exactly on top of it. It just got worse and worse.”  

Rich was a bartender for around 15 years. At age 13 he worked in a grocery store, and at age 15 he was a waiter. In Texas, he even won competitions for his guacamole and an award for his margarita.   

Living with cancer, Rich’s first part of the day is waking up sick. He wakes up at 5 a.m and makes it to class by 9.   

“It just is what it is. It’s a process,” Rich said.   

Rich has a lot of pain to take care of by the end of the day, and de-stresses in the evening.  

In remission now, Rich plans in the future to be an independent filmmaker. Rich used to own a record label in Texas, and with the help of his partner, they worked with artists to get gigs at clubs and produce their albums.  

“Then cancer just got really bad and I nearly died, and I just felt like, well, what do I really want to do? And that’s film,” Rich said.   

Rich has been building his own media companies and grinding to get to the next level.  

“The way I look at it is, I’m already dealing with pain already. So might as well get up and deal with the pain while doing something. I have a wealth of stories and as a filmmaker I want to make the movies I want to make before I’m done. And if I can accomplish that, that’s all that matters,” Rich said.   

“Your mind’s a muscle, if you don’t use it you lose it, so that’s really important.” 

Phillip and Diane Priers are Golden Scholars at CMU. Both retired, they are focusing on Spanish with the goal of traveling internationally and conversing fluently with different cultures.  

Golden scholars at CMU are allowed to sit in on classes, even if the size limit has been reached. It comes at a reduced cost, and they don’t earn grades.  

“We like being part of the university environment because it helps us learn and stay young and we’ve always been doing something like this. We consider ourselves to be lifelong learners,” Mr. Prier said. “[Spanish] uses a different part of our brain so we’re hoping that it will hold off any Alzheimer’s or stuff like that, and it’s just fun to be around young people that have all these energy and ideas.”  

When they’re not in class or studying, Mr. Prier takes care of finances for a local church while Mrs. Priers for a food bank and does tax aid. When the Priers were in college, Diane went to the University of Phoenix for her master’s degree and Philip completed a MBA program in Florida.  

“[There was] a lot more memorization than today. I didn’t feel like we had as many tools,” Mr. Prier said. “I find that just in general terms, young people are open to new ideas, more so than older people are, they’re exploring and they’re learning and they’re thoughtful in terms of exploring the ins and outs of different issues,” Mrs. Prier said. “Whereas some people get old and they have their positions figured out on a subject and they just don’t change. The world changes but their perspectives don’t.”  

“I didn’t go to a traditional high school. I graduated from an alternative high school program in 2004.”  

Griffith Chiono, 34, is majoring in Nursing at CMU, after spending over 14 years as a chef. He’s worked in Portland, Seattle, Denver and Grand Junction in various roles in the kitchen.  

“[I came back to college for a] change in career. I spent a long time kind of following and pursuing one thing, and accomplished really all the goals that I had in it, and got bored, and I wanted to do something.”  

Chiono came to CMU because he had family in Grand Junction. He previously served as the chef de cuisine at Bin 707, a local restaurant, for five years, and currently works as a bartender at Baron’s downtown. “It is challenging to go from being a night person to a morning person. I have to be an all the time person, I don’t get the privilege of sleeping very often.”  

After spending over a decade in the food industry, Chiono is older than most of the students in his classes, which can both help and hinder him. “I think that perspective is helpful, and in some situations life experience and the perspective has just helped me a lot But also it depends on the class. From 2006 to 2019, I didn’t do algebra. You know, like walking into that class, I did not feel at all more on top of it.”  

Chiono didn’t know that he was certain about becoming a nurse until last semester. The culinary world, according to him, is demanding, and while he was passionate, it was a slow burnout that eventually accumulated, which prompted him to search for something new.  

“Nursing, it’s a gamble, so hopefully it works out. That’s kind of the cool thing about being an adult and being a human, you get to change your mind when you want to,” Chiono said.