Sometimes It’s Okay to Start Again

He’d Been Out of School 12 Years. Then One Conversation Changed His Direction.

OSSIAN, IOWA ~ Somewhere along the way, a lot of us were handed an invisible timeline.

Finish school.

Pick a career.

Figure out what you’re going to do with your life.

And preferably, figure it all out while you’re still young enough to believe everybody else already has.

But life doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes you get a few miles down the road before realizing:

Maybe I want to go somewhere different.

For Northeast Iowa’s Corey Tieskoetter, that realization eventually led him back to a classroom after being away from school for 12 years.

He didn’t walk through the doors of Northeast Iowa Community College with some grand plan to earn a degree.

In fact, he originally intended to take only a few certificate courses.

Corey had already spent more than a decade in the workforce. He’d had good jobs and worked with good people, but by 2012, something had changed.

He wanted something different.

Living in Ossian, Northeast Iowa Community College offered him an opportunity to make that change without leaving the community where he lived and worked.

But returning to school after 12 years?

That was another matter.

Corey has admitted it put him well outside his comfort zone.

Then he met Nate Gebel.

Gebel was an NICC instructor who happened to be taking the same class for continuing education. The two talked about what Corey hoped to do.

And apparently, Nate can be pretty persuasive.

Corey jokingly described him as “quite a salesman.”

Instead of taking just a few courses, Corey was convinced to become a full~time student.

Twelve years after leaving school, he was back.

And this time, he was all in.

Maybe Older Wasn’t a Disadvantage

There’s an interesting thing that can happen when you return to something later in life.

You aren’t necessarily the same person who left it.

Corey found that the years he’d spent working actually helped him when he returned to school. He was older, more mature and more focused than he believed he would have been immediately after high school.

And focused might be putting it mildly.

At one point, Corey tackled 24 credits in a single semester.

During another semester, he carried 14 credits while completing an internship and working his regular job.

That’s enough to make the rest of us tired just reading it.

But he kept going.

In 2014, Corey graduated with an Agriculture Finance certificate and an Associate of Applied Science degree in Agriculture Business.

Agriculture made sense.

He had grown up on a farm, and he knew there were opportunities in the industry right here in Northeast Iowa.

He didn’t have to leave home to build something new.

And Then Something Pretty Neat Happened

Education opened the door Corey had hoped it would.

Today, he works as a business development officer in the crop insurance division at Farm Credit Services of America, serving a six-county territory in Northeast Iowa.

But here’s one of our favorite parts of the story.

Remember Nate?

The instructor who helped convince Corey to take the leap and become a full~time student?

They eventually became colleagues.

Corey has now spent years working alongside the very man who helped give him that push back toward school.

Life has a funny way of bringing a story around again.

But Corey’s connection with NICC didn’t end with a diploma, either.

Over the years, he has served on the college’s Agriculture Advisory Committee, spoken at college events and returned to classrooms to talk with agriculture students.

In other words, the guy who once had to find the courage to walk back into a classroom now walks into classrooms to encourage somebody else.

There’s something awfully good about that.

Maybe You Aren’t Behind

Corey’s story was recently shared by Northeast Iowa Community College as the college celebrates its 60th anniversary.

But there is a message tucked inside his journey that reaches much farther than one school or one career.

There may be somebody reading this who has been thinking about going back to school.

Or changing careers.

Starting a business.

Learning something new.

Trying again after something didn’t work the first time.

Maybe you’ve been quietly telling yourself:

I’m too old.

It’s been too long.

Everybody else is ahead of me.

I should have done this years ago.

Maybe.

But those years weren’t necessarily wasted.

Corey discovered that the years between classrooms had given him experience, maturity and focus that he didn’t have before.

Sometimes the road you’ve already traveled prepares you for the road you’re about to take.

And yes, beginning again can be uncomfortable.

Corey knows that firsthand.

One piece of advice he now shares with people considering a return to school comes from a phrase used by leadership at his workplace:

“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

Because sometimes the uncomfortable part doesn’t last nearly as long as we imagine it will.

But the opportunity waiting on the other side?

That can change the direction of a life.

Corey went back after 12 years.

He started with plans for only a few classes.

He left with credentials, a new career direction and a connection to his college that continues more than a decade later.

So perhaps there’s another way to look at starting over.

Maybe you aren’t late.

Maybe you aren’t behind.

And maybe starting again doesn’t mean you’ve gone backward at all.

Sometimes it simply means you’ve finally found the road you want to take.

And there is no expiration date on taking the next step.

Deliverance Hope ~ Word ’Round Town

Source: Northeast Iowa Community College, September 3, 2026.