Student of the Year: Meet Arthur Ross, the world’s slowest student

Mark Twain rightly said, “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Following this maxim, a 71-year-old man graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia (UBC) on Thursday, more than 50 years after he initially enrolled. He told CBC, it makes me sound like the slowest student in the world and I guess that’s what I am. He took more than five decades to complete his degree, which is two years longer than the biology degree Robert FP Cronin, who started at Princeton University in 1948 and finished in 2000, currently holds the Guinness World Record. Also read: How useful is your degree? Why Indian graduates remain unemployed The World’s slowest student & his Journey After finally graduating, the 71-year-old retiree joked with UBC, “The headline on your story should to be ‘UBC finally graduates its slowest student. When Ross enrolled at UBC after high school in 1969, when The Beatles were about to release their landmark album Abbey Road and the US had just sent a man to the moon. At the beginning of his course, he recalled not being “particularly focused on anything.” He joined the college theatrical club, where he developed a love for acting. [caption id=“attachment_12655192” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Arthur Ross in 1969. Image Courtesy: ubc.ca[/caption] “I was besotted with theatre at the time. It was alive then, with a sense of vitality and newness. It seemed just electric to me,” Ross remembers. In the department, Ross would cross paths with renowned Canadian actors such as Nicola Cavendish, Larry Lillo, Brent Carver and Ruth Nichol, inspiring him further to pursue theatre, according to a UBC press release. Two years later, he changed his major and relocated to Montreal, where he enrolled in the National Theatre School.

🎓👏Meet three remarkable students graduating from UBC this year, proving age and time constraints are no barriers to success: https://t.co/mtpOxnFqKs#UBCgrad #UBCOgrad pic.twitter.com/Ln9g5o7LAm

— University of British Columbia (@UBC) May 24, 2023

He completed his studies and received a certificate of accomplishment. However, Ross said he soon realised that he did not want acting to become his career. “I liked it too much. It wasn’t going to be healthy for me. I knew I was a good actor but I always thought you had to be great,” according to NDTV. “I decided, ‘well, maybe I should go to law school and become a lawyer,’ sort of that last resort for everybody who can’t quite figure out what they want to do,” he told BBC. To complete the final year of his required three years of education before applying to law school, he returned to UBC. He obtained his Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto’s law school after being admitted. He spent 35 years as a civil litigator in Metro Vancouver before retiring in 2016. At that point, Ross thought perhaps it was time to complete what he had begun nearly fifty years ago. “It had always been in the back of my mind that, ‘oh, maybe someday you’ll go back to university and start working on finishing that degree,’” he told the outlet. He called UBC in November 2016 to get a new student number, and by January 2017 he was a part-time history student with an emphasis on the First World War. He decided to focus on his history studies after hearing the 1909 German opera Elektra, which reportedly inspired him to learn more about World War I. “It’s a waste not to take the opportunity to study something, anything that is of interest to you,” he said, adding that he has enjoyed the opportunity that has presented itself to me here. “I’m appreciative of the students accepting that old guy tuning in from outer space,” he told UBC. After all these years, Ross returned to UBC, and he remarked that a few things had changed. His tuition was now free because he is a senior who has retired, and the campus had grown in size. Like most students during the Covid-19 pandemic, he was able to do some of his coursework online thanks to technology’s rapid advancement. According to Ross, the experience made him in awe of the UBC faculty’s accomplishments and of his fellow students, who persisted in their studies despite the challenges and disruptions of the pandemic. Ross said he was eager to cross the stage and celebrate his achievement after six years of work on his degree. I’ve attended all of my kids’ graduations, he claimed. His family was now the one to honour him. Ross stated that he is not in a rush to determine what will happen next as he is “pleased to have come this far.” With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.