Chip Chick
There are so many people out in the world who wanted to get their undergraduate or master’s degrees when they were younger, but life got in the way, and they were never able to within the average time frame.
However, some people are still able to make it happen, no matter how old they are.
One of those people is Virginia Hislop, a 105-year-old woman from Palo Alto, California, who finally received her master’s degree from Stanford University after leaving the school in 1941.
Virginia was a hardworking young woman who attended Stanford’s School of Education and received her bachelor’s degree in 1940. She had dreams of becoming a teacher, so she started working toward her master’s degree in education that year.
Virginia comes from an impressive line of educators in her family. Her aunt was the principal of a school in Los Angeles, and her grandmother taught children in Kansas before the Civil War.
Virginia had completed all of the coursework she needed to earn her master’s, but before she could officially hand in her thesis and get her degree, her then-boyfriend, George Hislop, who was a student in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, was called to serve in World War II.
With that news, Virginia and George decided to tie the knot as soon as possible, and she left campus.
In interviews, Virginia expressed that she felt her school work was something she could always return to when she got the chance, but at that moment, she knew marrying George was a priority due to the war.
The couple lived in Washington following the war and started a family together. While she was unable to return to Stanford to receive her degree officially, Virginia never stopped dedicating her life to education.
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