Have you ever caught yourself wanting to relive that excitement of enrolling in classes and stepping onto campus that first day to plunge into the depths of a subject you are passionate about? And then you come to your senses when you consider the realities of showing up as a senior to school. Will you be the only senior student on campus? Will you be able to keep up? Will you be able to get up to speed with the technology used? Would you be able to handle the stress of deadlines and exams now? All those uncertainties talk you out of pursuing what might be the greatest pleasure available to us all: life-long learning.
It needn’t be like that. I, for one, did not let those doubting voices deter me from rekindling that long-ago love affair with the ivory towered. I knew I could expect a few changes in the intervening years, but preliminary investigations suggested that apart from the online nature of everything now – from signing up for courses, campus wifi, student card, bus pass and bike locker – the time-honoured traditions of lecture and seminar, textbooks and exams, and students eagerly in line for September’s start, are still very much a part of the learning landscape. I dove in, but only so far as to make myself available as a rogue ‘unclassified’ student for four months. While I had lost my head to this love the first time, this time I was going to play it coy.
Pleased that I had survived the first challenges of re-enrolling at my alma mater (UBC) – online registration – trepidation set in as the first day of class grew near. I remember that January day well. It arrived in classic Vancouver style: cold, blustery, sheets of sideways rain. As I waited for the bus, I was keenly aware that the man huddled in the shop doorway behind me rearranging his fort of cardboard piled against the wind, was even colder than I. The mood on the bus was more convivial; people making room for those with strollers and walkers and shopping carts at the front of the bus, the bus driver calling out frequently to “mind your step,” or “hold on,” and passengers throwing “thank
you” to the bus driver as they left.
When the bus pulled up to the campus stop, I took my position amongst those patiently waiting to disembark, and then merged with the streams of students striding towards their classes on the university’s main boulevard. By rehearsing my schedule the day before – locating the lecture halls and measuring fastest route between classes, with or without a bathroom break – I had taken precautions to minimize the chance that I would appear anything other than a perfectly capable twenty-year-old strolling through campus. The ruse seemed to be working.
The lecture hall for my first class – Islamic History – was couched in the pharmaceutical science building – vaulted ceilings with flared chrome buttresses, geodesic cubes doubling as entrances to lecture halls. I could just make out a young man at the front of the hall beneath the giant screen. He was dressed in a black turtleneck with corduroy blazer and jeans and was queuing up his computer, glancing frequently at his watch to time his ‘entrance’. After a brief welcome, he rolled out the course syllabus and what would be expected of us in the next four months. As he unravelled the course, and described the places we’d go, the more unfamiliar the topography was, the more in love, all over again, I felt.
The scenario repeated itself in the other two classes: spacious halls with sound systems at senior-friendly levels, and young, keen and approachable professors spelling out the fantastic voyages ahead. Students beside me were silent, alternatively focused on the professor or their phone screens. The rustling of books and backpacks to signal “I need time to get to my next class” would begin before class officially ended. I could see that if there was going to be anything to make me conspicuous in this crowd, it was going to be my unschooled enthusiasm.
In addition to the edge-of-your-seat lectures, I was besotted with just about everything else about being back at school. For one, there was a beautiful sense of familiarity; the campus ‘village’ perched at the edge of the sea, a flurry of buildings and boulevards and ‘malls’ all exuding an air of importance or mystery. For another, it was the new zeitgeist that pervaded the city. Courtesy and kindness ruled the day, in interactions on the streets, in shops, on transit, and on the busy bike lanes and greenways. On campus, student safety and inclusivity were now enshrined in university policy. Kiosks to access emergency services scattered across the campus? Academic dispensations for those students experiencing personal distress? A dazzling new world.
Yet, academic rigour at the university remained gloriously unchanged. The courses were challenging, and the roster of day-to-day expectations demanded the singular attention I was delighted to give. I loved that I got to be part of a coterie of inquisitive minds, to be lectured to each day, and inspired to explore the readings curated by the instructors. Overhearing students who had skipped classes to ski or were still drafting ideas for an assignment that was due tomorrow, I realized that, at my age, I had no time for complacency. Youth is not wasted on the old.
And to make sure that my new ability to adapt to any challenge passed muster, the universe threw in a world-changing event in the middle of my come-back year: a pandemic. The brisk daily routine of pedalling to campus was replaced by the more quotidian task of turning on the computer and welcoming our professors into the living room, their polished lectures interrupted by distracted wanderings to refill our coffee and check on the laundry. We somehow managed, summoning the discipline needed to finish final papers and exams. And remain hopeful we would be back in live lecture theatres in the fall.
In the end, pandemic aside, my brief flirtation with an old love did end as fate would have it; with a relationship reignited. And, judging by the presence of other senior academic explorers in my classes, I was not the only one exhilarated by this opportunity to continue learning and engaging meaningfully in this world. And I suspect that our gratitude for the privilege of revisiting a favourite pursuit (and, in some cases, with complementary tuition for those of us aged 65+!) and the preciousness of time to enjoy it, made the journey back all the more rewarding!
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