You Figure It Out

Dr. Jayne Maine

University of Presque

“Things We Think”

Paper presented at a conference held on a campus where they served excellent seafood. Conference was on Literature and Thinking. That’s all you need to know.

(Great conference theme.)

What are some of the things we think?

Is it really true that the brain slows down and gets twisted like an old grape vine as a person ages? Is it true we all go down hill after a certain point, but never on a sled because hip replacements are expensive? Is it true there’s no cure for dementia or Alzheimer’s disease yet? What are we thinking of? Naturally there are cures already and cures that are timeless. Take your pick.

Aren’t all of these beliefs and conditions regarding aging a result of secretiveness and the part of some sectors of society?

Aren’t these ideas society has also linked to cultural and economic customs? 

People who are retired are no longer useful. They don’t pay taxes and get free healthcare on Medicare, right? They’re stuck in the past, don’t like newfangled ideas and devices. They don’t have as much income, so they should be taking up less space in communities and on the planet. Besides, they use walkers or wheelchairs or canes. Damn slow, too. Why go out when you’re like that?

People say these things.

Harsh, isn’t it? But who among you, listeners or readers, has not heard or thought things just like these or at least very similar? Be honest. I’ll wait. Just as long as you don’t ask me how I know.

All right, now that you have all seen the truth of ageism with all its depraved and dotty concepts, we’re - I’m - going to show you why something must be done about it. In fact, we need a group of activists to get it into Congress as a bill. Or maybe one of the political parties will adopt anti-ageism as one of the main planks of its platform. (We can always hope.)

There appear to be quite a few nods of agreement among the group. 

One really good way to educate society as to the unconscious discrimination against the elders who are members of it, is to consider career choices. A lot of us chose a college major without a clear idea of what that meant for the rest of our lives. A lot of us also never got the chance to go to college. Another lot didn’t want to go to college. We all had our reasons, good ones.

(More nodding.)

What would each one of you do if, right this minute, today, somebody were to offer you the chance to go back to school and study anything you wanted? Don’t worry about grades or testing, which are of course a real drag. Just limit your response to the idea of being invited or at least welcomed into a field, a discipline, that you knew nothing or very little about. Would you do it? 

If you have answered yes to the previous question - would you do it - then maybe you could also take the time to say why you said yes. (This is not a foolish exercise.)

If you have answered no to the question, you might decide to stop reading at this point and I won’t be offended. Studying is not for everybody and some people never set foot in any type of academic space once they have graduated, unless it’s for a sports event. (And then it is often also for the tailgate parties.)

Now we can proceed with the premise that, if presented with certain conditions, a good number of people would return to the role of student. We’re not going to get into exact details about how many years of study would be required, or the precise degree being pursued. Those are important, but by keeping this discussion very general, it will allow more of our group to feel free to participate.

One other important rule of housekeeping, and probably the most important, is that AGE (note the capital letters) is not to have any influence whatsoever on any of you participants. For example: Nobody is permitted to say ‘I would study to be a nurse, but I am too old’. Nobody can say: ‘I have real bad arthritis and can’t do the things I used to, so I can’t study this or that’.

You get the picture: All the birthdays, wrinkles, aches and pains, forgotten or repeated words, limited income, etc. are not acceptable excuses. All selections must be made in the abstract. For example: ‘I always wanted to know more about plants. I want to study botany now’. Or: ‘I enjoy being with my grandchildren so much. I want to study elementary education’. Or: ‘I always wanted to study Spanish and be fluent, really good in it’.

You get the picture once again: The only basis for choosing to return to school (here, we specifically mean college) is to fulfill some personal need. That can be any sort of need. Maybe not everybody knows this, but often majors are selected because of something that we felt as kids. So those who loved Leggo blocks and Linkin Logs study engineering; those who watched the beavers build dams study animal sciences. (It doesn’t matter that they may leave academe to do wildlife rehab); those who went fishing a lot when young study marine science; and, as a final example, those who had lots of crayons and comics growing up become artists and writers.

Why insist on this unscientific listing as data for this study? Simply because a lot of students do that. They allow their inner child or their parents to pick their field of study for them.

All right, I realize that I am a college professor and that is exactly why I have seen so many examples of major program selection that come from a good, but innocent and undeveloped part of us. Students change back and forth, searching. Many of them may actually make the right choice. Not all of them do. Also, don’t forget that after we make a right choice, we can still, and probably will, get bored with it.

Work forty years as an engineer and you might well be drawn to playing the guitar more beside the water (instead of constructing the bridge above the river and ignores the river’s appearance, the shades of blue and green flowing and spurting over rocks...) Work in a studio by yourself and not being able to pay the mortgage because people aren’t buying art these days. You could become a landscaper. That might mean applying to the Department of Environmental Sciences.

Oops, sorry. Got carried away there. This is supposed to be an academic conference, but we are trying to do some thinking here, too, right? (Note name of conference, provided above.) 

We were talking about... about... going back to school as a mature student.

You get the picture, I presume: A lot of people choose to live, not in the past, but in the present and in the future they have the wisdom to plan. Wisdom that comes from livedom. (No typo.)

At this point everybody here has hopefully been paying attention and has guessed what we are going to do next. Obviously what we are going to do is take one minute to think about what matters most in life right now. 

Then you will do a free-write. You all know what that is, I assume? You write without stopping, without lifting your pen from the paper (some in the group aren’t very good with pen and paper). You keep writing until you are told to stop. A ‘free-write’ is sometimes interchanged with a ‘writing prompt’. Just please, everyone, follow the rules.

After that each of us will explain to the group how going back to school and getting a degree in that discipline will be a good plan, personally.

Everybody writes furiously for the next hour, sketching out a program of study and explaining why certain courses would be required for the student to be really good at whatever the chosen major had been. Consultation among them is allowed if really necessary. There are smiles as well as tears on the faces in the group. 

Everybody is amazed at how quickly the hour has gone by. A couple of participants have even begged for just half an hour more. Unfortunately, we do not have time for more individual writing. We need to begin. Because every day we are more mature and ee should but that maturity to good use. After all, this is Life College.

Follow-up to presentation of paper:

I believe that I made a mistake. 

I should have spent more time getting the participants ready to create life plans for themselves.

A couple of times I sounded a little too New-Agey and that is soooo bad.

I don’t like “Life College.” Too cutesy.

I should have explained to the readers of this story that there was supposed to be a complete fusion/confusion of the researcher, narrator, main character. 

That means, in plain English, that nobody knows who the hell is talking. 

That was what I was trying to do when I wrote this.

Follow Follow-up:

I don’t care if you readers got lost.

You know why?

Because if you made it all the way here, to the end, then you are fantastic readers. You all get A+ in the course ‘Going Back to School as Mature Student’.