It’s a strange thing to be returning to the classroom after nearly 20 years away. I was initially full of all the expected anxieties: will I have difficulty learning the material? Will I still be able to do academic assignments after years of job-oriented work? What will it be like being one of the few, or even the only, middle aged students in a room full of people young enough to be my children?
It’s mostly fine, as it turns out. The workload has been exhausting, because I’m still working full time, but the work itself so far is not especially difficult, and I’m having no real problems sliding back into academic ways of thinking and doing. The age difference between me and my fellow students is a bit more of a barrier, although I do think it’s felt almost entirely on my side. I’m having a hard time not thinking of my fellow students as “kids,” albeit in an affectionate sense, not a derogatory one. And they are smart kids. (I mean, of course they are; they wouldn’t have been admitted to this graduate program if they weren’t intelligent and capable.) I’m in large classes that make seminar-style discussions difficult, but I learn a lot anytime one of them raises their hand to speak or ask a question. We’re a program made up of students from many different undergraduate disciplines, and I genuinely love it when I get to listen to them tackle issues from perspectives that never would have even occurred to me.
But: from time to time I find myself getting frustrated by their lack of experience. This is 100% a “me” problem, not a “them” problem. I am by no means smarter than these kids, and in so many cases it’s quite the opposite; they continue to surprise and impress me with the sophistication of their thinking and how quickly they can assimilate and assess new concepts. But I have come to learn, and 20-year-old me certainly would have been upset to hear this, that simply existing in the world for twice as long as they have gives me an edge in certain ways, which is another way of saying that experience matters. I don’t even think the specific nature of experience matters much, although there are always going to be exceptions to that. I find myself having to avoid pulling the “I remember when this policy was first implemented” or “I was around to see this change happen” cards, though unfortunately I haven’t always been successful, and I always regret it afterwards. I’ve been living with, reading about, and thinking about some of the issues raised in class since before some of my classmates entered middle school. They simply haven’t had time to make some of the connections I have. I find myself wanting very much to share that perspective with them, but simultaneously not understanding how to do it without coming across as condescending or arrogant, which is the furthest thing from how I want to be in the classroom. I’m learning as much from these kids as I am from the professors, and I want to keep seeing those hands go up. If they think about me at all, I don’t want it to be as “that old guy who we hate being in a class with.”
I have a lot to think about, a lot of practice to manage, and a lot of learning to do about how to proceed in this space with care, something I wasn’t especially concerned with the last time I was here (but should have been).
