Since last spring, I have been working with clients at LifePath Systems, a health service provider in Plano, Tex. The organization helps individuals and their families who are dealing with mental illnesses, intellectual disabilities and developmental delays.

I left college after my first year when I ran out of money. During the next two decades, I worked as a flight attendant, married and had three children. In 1991, nearly 20 years after I would normally have graduated, I obtained my bachelor’s in psychology. Six years later, at 44, I graduated from the University of North Texas with a master’s degree in counseling psychology. While studying for those degrees, I took another detour to work with my mother at her staffing agency.

When she sold the agency in 2009, I started a social network for baby boomers, snabbo.com, which I still run. My husband had always encouraged me to revisit my original dream, however, and last year, when he brought it up again, I thought, “It’s time.”

In Texas, after obtaining your master’s in psychology, you need to intern for 3,000 hours to become a licensed professional counselor. You must first be licensed as an intern, which requires passing a national exam. It took me over a year to research the required steps, take a refresher course before the exam and then take the test.

Interning is as rewarding as I hoped it would be. I so enjoy helping people, and there is a lot to be said for doing it later in life. Older clients have told me how much they appreciate being able to talk to someone their age. That is not to take away from younger interns, who have more in common with people their own age. We’re all learning, and in that respect we’re all on an equal footing.

I get along fine with the young interns and would like to be regarded as their industry peer. We don’t have a lot of time to talk, but occasionally one will ask me about the 1960s or if I was at Woodstock. I make a concerted effort not to act like their mom. I’m careful about my tone of voice so that it doesn’t appear that I think I know it all. Some people in an encore career might appear to think that, and no one is going to appreciate it.

Some seniors are fearful of using computers, and I admit it has been a challenge for me here. But that’s because LifePath has a government billing system for insurance claims, with specific vocabulary and codes I had to learn. I was lucky to have built a Web site, because I developed Web skills — and confidence — working with the 25-year-old programmer I hired to help me.

I learned from him, but I think he learned about usability for seniors from me. For example, I told him he had to enlarge a type font so I could read it. After working with him, I also feel more comfortable asking a 23-year-old intern for help with the LifePath system. I’ve been trained on it, but I still have questions.

Younger people are tech-savvy. They pick up Internet skills faster than most seniors, but that’s O.K. Seniors shouldn’t be fearful of returning to school or re-entering the work force just because they might have to learn more about the Internet and computers than they’d like. To use a computer analogy, we need to hit the refresh button. We’ve been blessed with longevity, and if we don’t expand our interests and skills, many of us will undoubtedly be bored.

I am slowly picking up hours at LifePath, but I’ve taken this long to become a counselor, and I can wait a little longer. The number of internship hours I need is daunting but doable. This experience has given my life meaning; I’d like to think that I’m helping people in some small way.

I have all kinds of altruistic hopes and dreams and would like to have my own practice in geriatric psychology someday. I’m in a field where everyone needs someone to talk to — someone who will fully listen to them. There is so much to be said for wisdom. When you’re young, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. I may have a lot to learn, but on the other hand, I have a lot of life experience.

As told to Patricia R. Olsen.