It’s graduation week for many University of Guelph students, but it’s a particularly special day for one 68-year-old whose walk across the convocation stage was 49 years in the making.
Dave Burnett, who grew up in Guelph, Ont., started his Bachelor of Science degree at the university’s Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) in 1976 almost immediately after completing high school.
Then, life happened.
Burnett told CBC K-W’s The Morning Edition host Craig Norris that he mainly went to university to appease his mother.
Despite doing well academically, he dropped out because he said he wanted to work with his hands.
“I am a farm boy … at the first opportunity I sort of slid out the back door,” Burnett said.
But now, decades later, Burnett’s convocation is Thursday afternoon and his wife and two of his daughters will be cheering him across the stage.
After Burnett left the university, he worked as a miller for a time, and then he managed corporate farms before starting his own accounting business.
He says the next 20 years of his blue-collar life, he fell into the “abyss of addiction” to drugs and alcohol. It was an all-consuming fall and one that left his personal and professional life in tatters.
“I had a very, very strong work ethic in the background, but addiction is more powerful,” Burnett said.
His turning point came when a friend checked on him after a major health scare and Burnett said he didn’t even know what day of the week it was.
Catalyzed by health problems, Burnett committed to the journey back to sobriety, but not without long-term consequences, like deafness. Burnett recalled sitting in a doctor’s office, forms to apply for permanent disability in front of him, and refusing to sign them.
“I had always worked, even through all the problems. I’d always had a job,” he said.
It was then he realized that his way through was to finish his education journey.
That was 30 years ago. By Burnett’s account, the journey hasn’t always been smooth. The University of Guelph let him come back to dabble in a Bachelor of Arts program but it wasn’t for him.
That’s when he came back to his roots: He became what is affectionately known in the university’s lingo as an “aggie,” or somebody who studies agriculture.
Burnett, already his classmates’ senior by a couple decades, navigated the classic woes of university life: Organizing courses based on availability, taking prerequisites and those ever-looming deadlines.
“I remember in particular sitting down the first or second course and realizing my blue jeans were older than most of the people in the class,” he said.
After a while, though, Burnett said he didn’t worry too much about being the older fish in the young pond.
“You’re writing the same exams, the same tests, the same deadlines as everybody else. You’re just seen as another student,” he said.
Joshua Nasielski, a professor in the department of plant agriculture, said everyone in his classes respected Burnett.
“He always brought energy and humour to class and students often joked that he was the class clown,” Nasielski said in a release by the school.
He called Burnett an “unconventional thinker” whose “passion and drive were inspiring.”
“Dave was willing to share lessons from his years of real-world experience as a farm accountant with the class, which was a huge asset. He must be one of the only undergraduate students to deliver a guest lecture for a class that he was enrolled in,” Nasielski said.
Bit by bit, weaving through life’s daily challenges, marriage, kids and even more health complications, Burnett took a couple courses at a time. He said he can’t remember a time where he wasn’t thinking or worrying about an assignment.
He notes in his five decades at the school, he’s encouraged to see less of an emphasis on factual data (which, he still notes he does use in his current business), but more of a push for critical thinking.
“There was no right answer to anything … I could explain my thinking,” he said.
Burnett has run his own business consulting with farmers for the past 10 years. Now, he said he has the skills and experience to tell clients why he’s advising them a certain way.
That business will now get restructured because Burnett wants to spend more time connecting with his loved ones. He still hasn’t gotten the memo about retirement — although a graduate degree is most likely not in his future.
He said his biggest takeaway from the life he’s lived has been that there is no right way to come back to what you feel passionate about.
His time in lectures, challenging his beliefs (and some of his professors’ beliefs as well) and doing research taught him there was value to all kinds of experience.
“We don’t have to accept the common beliefs … the world is our oyster,” he said. “I’ve heard that saying and now I believe it.”
