MURRELLS INLET, SC (WBTW) – 89-year-old Doris Glass graduated from Coastal Carolina University this month with her degree in interdisciplinary studies.
“I wanted liberal arts, so I could, you know, have a variety of things,” she said.
When 89-year-old Doris Glass signed up for a few classes for fun, she had no idea it’d turn into a degree, but when a Coastal Carolina University staff member said she’d been taking enough classes to get a degree, she thought, why not?
She told the staff at CCU she’d go for the degree under one condition.
“I’m going to do what I want to do, because I would be very upset if I died without taking the classes I wanted,” Glass said.
Art and writing were just some of the classes glass took while at CCU, and she even learned to play the flute.
“Writing is hard work, and I’m lazy, so it took awhile before I, I think I was in my 50s before I really started writing,” she said.
Growing up near a blimp base during World War II, she remembers when she first found a love for writing.
“The blimp would go over so low, that they could lean out the window and wave and yell at us, and I thought, gee, it’d be a cute story if I wrote about our cat getting lost in the woods and ending up in a blimp, hanging out the window, waving at me,” she laughed.
What’s next? Glass says although she was turned down for a masters degree program because the class she wanted was overflowing with applicants, she says plans to be a published writer in the near future.
“I was turned down, and yes, I was disappointed, but then this feeling of relief came, because I thought, I don’t have to take all those courses,” she smiled. “I don’t have to do all that homework!”
Doris Glass is a woman who’s beat cancer, been through the Great Depression, and many wars, and on the topic of age?
She says, it’s just a number.
“My mother always said, you’re 50. You could be a young 50, or an old 50. It’s up to you,” said Glass.
