Being a Non-Traditional Student at a Traditional College

There are people in this world who think that when one reaches a certain age the one should just stop learning and either work or live off the government dole.  The Padowan's father believes this is so and he's only in his 40's.  He thinks that he'd be wasting his time if he decided to go back to college.  I'm in my 50's and I don't want work at some dead-end job or just sit around and do nothing for the rest of my life because if I were to do either one of those I would just burn out or stagnate or both, and I don't intend to do either.

I have been taking classes at our local community college in American Sign Language or ASL.  Currently I am in the ASL Studies Certificate program though I will be applying for the Sign Language Interpreter Training program in February.  If I do get in the program I will be starting the program in the fall and attending for another 2 years.  If I don't I will be graduating this Spring.  In any case, I am back at school learning, something we all continue to do throughout our lives. 

As an older student I am finding that while some things are a challenge there are a great many rewards, including the ability to get younger students sit up and take notice when you tell them, indirectly of course, that their idea of the world is skewed by technology.  The majority of students in traditional colleges today all grew up with things that weren't invented when I was their age. (Boy does that sound old and patronizing.)  I was 18 when purely by chance I first saw a car with a phone in it.  Before that car phones were something that was only seen in the movies.  We had computers, but that thing that most of today's students carry in their backpacks use to take up multiple rooms that were the size of 2 average size living rooms.  And cell phones! The very first cell phone call was made just 2 months before I graduated from high school in 1973.

Last semester I was taking an English Writing class and we were reading the book The Glass Castle a memoir written by Jeannette Walls.  We discussed the book in every class and often times the younger students were making observations about the book and comparing it with what they knew, putting their own knowledge and life experiences on what was happening in the book.  But then I would speak and remind them that the time period Jeannette was writing about was vastly different than what it is today.  In the book Walls writes about her experiences growing up poor in the Southwest and in West Virginia.  The beginning of the book starts with a most vivid memory for Walls; she had managed to catch her dress on fire while cooking at age 3.  When she was in the hospital the doctors and nurses all seemed to tap-dance about whether or not to call child welfare.  To the other students it seemed obvious that they should have called because Walls had either been neglected or abused or both.  Then I reminded them that many schools at that time still had corporal punishment and that parents were expected to spank their misbehaving children.  To spank a child in public was not a crime unlike now when a parent could be jailed for just threatening a child.


The point is that having an older student in the class is good for everyone because everyone benefits.  Padowan's father doesn't get it.  I pity him because to him his life is over except for the dying part.  I don't intend to ever think that way.  I expect to live a good, long, learning filled life and I expect one day to go back for even more schooling.  Maybe another Bachelor's degree, then a Master's, and then maybe a Doctorate.  Why not when I expect to live to at least 100.  Maybe longer. Who knows.