University life is often associated with young people fresh out of high school or in their 20s. However, a few take an untraditional route, starting their college career well into adulthood.

According to statistics from San Francisco State University, students over the age of 60 made up roughly 0.3% of the university’s student body in Spring 2023.

Rodolfo Guzman is 62 years old and part of that small percentage at SFSU. Amid a sea of younger classmates, he is an example of lifelong learning and determination.

Teaching dance lessons at studios all across San Francisco, Guzman is working towards a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology to better establish himself as a strength and conditioning specialist.

“It carries a certain gold standard for any personal trainer,” said Guzman. “It’d also be nice to get my bachelor’s because that was the original plan.”

Guzman returned to SFSU last fall after his last semester over 20 years ago.

When he lived with his girlfriend in Santa Rosa in the spring of 1993, Guzman enrolled at SFSU as a film major. His education at the university came to a halt after two semesters when his girlfriend died in a car accident.

“That just kind of threw my world upside down,” said Guzman. “At some point, I ended up homeless, sleeping in my car, going to the gym to take a shower, taking naps at the library and looking for work.”

Guzman soon fell behind on his tuition payments which led him to drop out of school.

In the years that followed, Guzman opened a restaurant in 1999 — the first Papalote location in the Mission District — before leaving the restaurant scene to teach dance classes and discover his passion for fitness.

In Fall 2023, Guzman returned to SFSU to align his academic pursuits with his career in teaching dance through a degree in kinesiology.

“It’s really interesting, the connection between exercise and quality of life,” said Guzman. “I never had a scientific approach to what I was doing in the movement, the dancing and the exercise, so that’s what brought me back.”

Guzman is optimistic for his second round as a student at SFSU.

“Back then, when I was homeless, I had no money and didn’t have food. There was this supermarket and I would buy a small thing and put a sandwich in my pocket,” said Guzman. “But now, there’s all kinds of resources for students. People are constantly asking you if you need emotional support, or support for food and housing.”

However, making friends in classes is a challenge that the older student is still working on.

“When it’s time to work in groups, everybody wants to work with people their own age,” said Guzman. “So it’s a little bit more work to establish some meaningful connection.”

According to an SFSU enrollment study, the majority of students are from the ages 18 to 24. Guzman is not alone when it comes to being an outlier in this statistic. 

William Harris, 50, is completing his two bachelor’s degrees in communications and Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts by the end of the fall semester.

As a person who will have maintained sobriety from alcohol for six years by this upcoming November, Harris finds purpose and structure through his coursework at SFSU and his faith in God.

Harris said getting to this stage in his life wasn’t easy. His drinking habit began when he was 13 years old.

“I always felt uncomfortable in my own skin and alcohol gave me a release from that,” said Harris. “It became the solution and it worked for a really long time, until it became an addiction.”

Harris first went to Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina where he completed one year, then dropped out. In the years after, Harris filled his time surfing, skiing, biking and bartending at high-end restaurants on the East Coast.

“In the restaurant industry, the accepted behavior is ‘work hard, play hard,’” he said. “I lived a very hedonistic lifestyle and was in the pursuit of pleasure.”

39-year-old Harris realized he needed a change. 

“I had a void that the world wasn’t filling, and I was trying to fill it, but it wasn’t working,” he said. “I didn’t have purpose and I didn’t see my value.”

At one point, Harris weighed 126 pounds — almost 50 pounds less than his current weight — and was uncontrollably shaking everyday.

“I was mentally, physically and spiritually sick, and I was going to take my life,” said Harris.

After reaching out for help from a close friend, Harris joined Alcoholics Anonymous and found his faith in God. By November 2018, he became sober.

But his journey did not stop there. As a bartender, Harris felt that working in an environment selling alcohol was not conducive to trying to have a sober lifestyle.

After talking to successful academics in his life — his parents and his neighbor, an SFSU alumna — Harris got inspired to go back to college.

Slowly building up his course load each semester, Harris graduated from City College of San Francisco with his associate degree and then transferred to SFSU. 

“The productivity of being a student maintained some of the loudness of my mind,” said Harris. “My mind and my emotions stabilized through discipline.”

As a full-time student, Harris juggles a tough load while simultaneously working three jobs and still maintaining a 3.97 GPA.

Harris found a great appreciation for classes in the BECA program like media aesthetics with Professor Cintya Chavez and electronic field production with Professor Len Haynes.

Last summer, Harris secured a job with Bonneville International Corporation, a media broadcasting company, as a promotion assistant and traveled to Greece filming documentaries with SFSU alumni.

For his last semester at SFSU, Harris looks forward to continuing his KSFS radio show, “All About the Movie Soundtrack,” where Harris and his two classmates, Sahara Palacios Saavedra and Brandon Rivera-Guerrero, discuss a different movie soundtrack every Thursday night.  

Harris says he looks back proudly at his journey of sobriety and academics.

“In comparison to the past six years of my life to the way I was living my life before, there was a lot of healing, restoration and transformation,” said Harris. “And it’s all because of my faith and what I believe in, and surrounding myself with people who strive to do the best work they can.”