I am about to go back to school at 49 on Tuesday.

I feel like I can't even answer this because it had to have changed a lot in the last 9 years since I graduated at age 38. At that point I always carried a laptop. But I don't know what is going to work best for you. I like a trackball. So I always took mine in my book bag. And that is one thing I did buy was a really sturdy book bag. But also because I used to ride motorcycles back then so I knew I needed something to have my books and my laptop that wouldn't fall off while I was going down the road. But apparently students at that point didn't necessarily know what a trackball was. I guess they've gone out of style. One of them came up and asked me what it was, which I thought was funny. It was stressful. I was working full-time for a lot of it. I got better grades than I ever did. I stayed on top of all studies and projects better than I ever had. A did about 2 years at the community college first before transferring to the 4 year college. I feel like your program could be different. But these were just core classes and beginning business classes at community college. And the core classes the teach ers tended to treat students more like they were in high school which is pretty annoying. When I got to my business classes, even at the community college, that was different. Those teachers treated students more like adults. And then at the 4 year University it's even more so. But also at that point I was only 300 level classes it up. So those professors expect what should be Juniors and seniors to act like adults. When I was at the community college there weren't that many older students. Most of them were like 18 and 19 years old. There were two that were closer to 30 in my classes. We formed a study group together. When I got to the 4-year University there were more non-traditional students. Former military. People going back for their degree or getting a second one. So there were more older people around. I didn't necessarily gravitate towards them. There were a lot of group projects. And because so much of the University was in fraternities and sororities, those people tended to form their groups together. So the leftovers are what I got. And that did tend to be some of the non-traditional students which was totally fine. One of my groups had two former military people in it who were in their mid-twenties. I had pretty good rapport with most of my teachers and professors. Once I got past those ones that treated us like high school students. I generally sat on the first or second row. Participated in class. To give you a slightly funny adage. I was staying late in one of my classes because I had a question. This is a class I never missed. A test was coming up and I was looking for clarification on our topic. Another student was in front of me asking the professor about something. The professor looked at him and said "Why should I take time to explain this to you when you don't ever come to class? I already explained this." And then he sent that student on his way. Then I asked my question, and because he knew that I never miss class, he took 10 minutes or something sitting there explaining the topic to me in depth.