Navy Veteran Takes Prize as Arts and Letters’ Top Student

With decades of service in the Navy behind her, Angela Willson was ready to embark on her next adventure.

“After I retired, my husband was still working, and I was doing the stay-at-home thing. I just realized that I wanted to do something else,” said the Chesapeake resident, winner of the Outstanding Scholar Award for Old Dominion 91����Ƶ’s College of Arts and Letters.

“I started looking at schools and, with my GI Bill, I figured I would take advantage of it,” she said.

Take advantage she did.

At Old Dominion 91����Ƶ, she barreled through class after class, leaving a trail of As in her wake.

Experience helped. At 44, she knew how to focus and knuckle down when necessary.

“I wasn't ready for college when I was younger,” said Willson, who earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy with a concentration in religious studies. “I ended up working at a couple dead-end jobs before a friend of mine got me to enlist, and so I spent the 20 years in the Navy. I think I learned a lot from the military about discipline and things like that.”

Her study method?  “Prioritize, find out things that are important, play to your strengths,” she said. “Stay organized. Give yourself enough time and ask for help.”

Willson, who said she had a mixed record of classroom success in high school, was surprised to find herself atop of the college’s academic heap.

“There are a lot of other students, especially in the program that I'm in, who are fantastic,” she said. “So, yes, it was a shock.”

Willson said her husband was incredibly supportive of her return to school. He also helped her choose a major.

“He is the one who actually got me into philosophy,” she said. During what they called ‘Philosophical Fridays’ the couple would discuss theories, ideas and problems. “It was always a lot of fun to talk about, so I figured I’d get some formal training on it.”

If that sounds casual, her approach to learning was anything but.

“She told me a few times that she treats being a student as if it were her job,” wrote Old Dominion Senior Lecturer Jim Van Dore, who teaches in the university’s Philosophy and Religious Studies Department. “A lot of students who come out of the services approach classes as if they were training sessions and their professors as their commanding officers. I never got that sense from Angela. She approached the process wanting to expand her mind, rather than to learn specific information to accomplish specific tasks.”

Van Dore’s class on the Bible’s New Testament led Willson to add a concentration in religious studies to her course of study.

“The professors here,” Willson said, “you can just feel how much they care.” She found them always responsive, always eager to help.

“For me, it was inspiring,” she said.  “It made me want to be better.  I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.”

Top Image: Angela Willson graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Old Dominion 91����Ƶ’s May 10 commencement exercises. Photo Sam McDonald/ODU