But Payne’s most recent milestone is not that of your everyday 90-year-old. This past December, she received her master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies, making history as the oldest person to complete their coursework at the University of North Texas.
“I’m not thinking about dying, I’m thinking about doing,” Payne says.
Payne was escorted across the commencement stage on Dec. 17 by her grandson, Payne Billings, as she received a standing ovation by many onstage and in the audience.
“I was elated that I had accomplished it, but there was also a great feeling of humbleness that I had been granted the privilege of accomplishing it,” Payne says.
In addition to her family, Payne credits much of UNT’s faculty, including her master’s program advisor, Dr. Billy Roessler, assistant dean of graduate studies at UNT’s Toulouse Graduate School, for helping her complete her studies.
“We use the term `lifelong learner,’ but Minnie truly exhibits this,” Roessler said in a news release. “Her persistence to complete her degree at age 90 is impressive. She had a purpose in completing this degree.”
Payne’s education has been decades in the making. An avid love of learning has been ingrained in her since she was a girl growing up in an impoverished South Carolina mill village. After graduating from high school, she carried on her love for writing, journalism and English classes to a Baptist junior college after her sister saved up $500 for her to attend. Unable to pay for another semester and with no college-educated relatives to help further encourage Payne’s own education, she took a decades-long break from her studies.
“Everything you learn, everything good you learn, benefits your life and the lives of those around you.” – UNT master’s grad Minnie Payne
“We were just doing what was expected of us,” Payne says. “We lived in a small world, and we didn’t know any better.”
After spending years as a stay-at-home mother, Payne later worked and retired from her professional career. But at the age of 68, she wasn’t done learning. She later applied and was accepted to Texas Woman’s University in 2002. She graduated from the university with a bachelor’s degree in general studies at the age of 73.
“I’m 90 now, and it’s only natural for me to realize that I’m sort of living on borrowed time. … But when I was 68 I mainly went back to school because I had always been around words and had wanted something constructive to do,” Payne says. “[Being a non-traditional student] was not always easy, but it was worth every minute.”
With her bachelor’s degree completed, Payne was able to focus more on her lifelong passion of writing and she worked as a freelance writer and copy editor for nearly two decades.
“Writing, to me, is sort of a selfish profession,” Payne said. “It is self-serving mentally, and is also self-serving as in rewarding. For me, like I understand it must be for many others, it is a form of therapy. […] I feel so fortunate to be able to do what I do, and would not know as much as I do about it if I had not gone back [to school].”
But even at 88-years-old, Payne’s need to learn was still insatiable. She wanted to continue to improve herself, her life and the lives of her family, and was soon accepted to Toulouse Graduate School.
“I wanted to raise the ladder one more step and get my master’s degree,” Payne says. “Everything you learn, everything good you learn, benefits your life and the lives of those around you.”
Now an accomplished graduate with a master’s degree, Payne wants to continue to do what she’s always loved doing, and is taking one of her professor’s words to heart.
“I remember Tracy Everbach saying in one of my undergraduate classes at UNT to ‘write, write, write,’” Payne says. “It doesn’t matter what kind of publication, the more you write the better you become. And that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Payne says she is grateful for the chance to have reached her current level of education at her age, as it has helped further the experience she says is required in journalism. She is now writing for and working with content management systems for Houston Style Magazine.
As far as her future in the classroom, Payne says she knows a doctorate will likely not benefit her as much at this age. However, she is proud to have had the opportunity to accomplish what she has throughout her educational career, and she encourages students at any and all points in their life to strive to further their own education.
“I feel that what I have done and what I’m doing is not only helping myself, but helping others. And I think that that, in a nutshell, sort of sums up why I’m glad that I’ve been able and am able to accomplish what I have done and what I’m doing,“ Payne says. “If it profits them as much as it has profited and is profiting me, it will be a star in their crown.”
