Confessions of an over 50 college student

Confessions of an over 50 college student
by
Chaplain Kathie

Hard to believe I'm heading into the 4Th week of college. Not that it is so hard the time has gone by so fast but that I survived this long! One thing wrong at a time, feeling totally lost learning how to use a MAC while trying to keep my PC from doing the death rattle, topped off with a heavy dose of tech programs that would make anyone my age want to run away. It hasn't been all bad. Some of these programs have me all excited about the potential these challenges will provide in the long run if my professors don't kill me first. I am attending Valencia Community College and going for a certificate in Digital Media and Post Production. It would be great to be able to find a job that pays after all of this but that was not the goal when I decided to go. I wanted to make videos a lot better than I have been. Teaching myself how to make them was one thing but these programs are amazing! They are also complicated but I am in a learning curve since I've been out of school so long.

Two years ago I trained with other people my age or older to be a Chaplain. Since then it's been one training after another, again with people in my age group. We all had the same problems along with a lot in common. Twelve years ago I went back to college for a certificate in Microsoft Office programs. That grouping was a blend of all ages and most of us were there because of our jobs. The "new" programs back then were required for most of the jobs people like me had been doing since high school. Speaking of high school, when I went nothing was done on a computer! We were lucky to have a typing class on electric typewriters. (It is like just having a keyboard attached to a printer and it is all powered by your brain connected to your fingers. No spell check!)

So now I am in class with a bunch of great kids my daughter's age and I feel like a proud Mom astounded by what they are able to do along with a heavy dose of possibilities as they think about what they want to do in life. They were flying through the lessons while I was still trying to keep my files off the desktop and put into the "docking" station at the bottom of the MAC. Once I finally figured out where all the minimized files I had went to, it was too late to figure out where the professor had jumped too. Thank God there is a great kid next to me to help me find what I thought was lost. I have an online class I totally blew and I'll be lucky if I can ever make up for giving that professor gray hair. Then I have an art class when for whatever reason, I'm doing well even though I used to have trouble connecting the dots. What really has me nervous is as hard as these three classes are, there is another one starting next month! Lord have mercy on me.

That leads me to the next point of all of this. I spent the last 15 years or so online trying to reach out to the younger generation almost as hard as I had been trying to reach the veterans from Vietnam. To be able to do it right, I had to learn how to use things from the world they live in and then run with them. People are still people no matter how old they are and something like PTSD does not change. The way we help them has to change or it will do little good. There are organizations all over the country, established and with plenty of knowledge along with power but what they don't have is someone to catch them up to speed on how people communicate now.

They don't want to read a book. They want to read a Facebook post or a Tweet. They don't want to watch a documentary, they want to watch a movie. They don't play bingo or board games, they play video games. While all the other things are find and dandy depending on the generation you are trying to deal with, all you do has to be geared to where they are. We can put our foot down and say they have a lot to learn from us. While that is absolutely true, we cannot forget that we have a lot to learn from them. Too tell you the truth, I learn a lot more from watching a report than reading one. I read way too many emails and then follow the links to a fraction of the posts you read here. Honestly, I am bored with the vast majority of them. I especially don't like the reports that have no emotion tied to them as if reporters are holding their noses having to report on a soldier's death just offering his name, age, maybe if you're lucky they'll toss in where he went to school but for the most part it is a blend of the DOD release and an obituary. Anything personal is just too much for them to pay attention to. I pass those right by because I won't glorify some hack that can't give a fallen solider a little bit of interest. Anyway, all that aside, since I am used to reading these reports, if I get bored, than don't you think someone not used to reading them would zone out and quit reading?

We have to keep up with them or we will be letting them all down.

If you happen to be in college with more life experience than most of your classmates have been alive, reach out a hand to them and don't you dare be ashamed you have to ask them for help. After all, think of it this way. They have no clue how to change the channel on the TV if they can't find the remote! We know what hardship is because we had to get up and do it all the time.