Tuesday, October 26, 2010

What Senior College really means

I have just come from leading the third session of a Senior College mini-course at Dorothy Love Retirement Community in Sidney. About 20 active seniors attended the three Tuesday evening sessions. The topic: Bananas. I decided to take a single, everyday subject - one we all take for granted - and explore it from a multi-disciplinary approach. So, over the course of three weeks we looked at bananas from a scientific, historical, political, economic, cultural, and personal perspective. We made connections from politics to science, from economics to music, and back again.

At the end of tonight's session, one of the participants came up to chat. She smiled and said thank you. Then she said she was born in '18. She had lost her husband of 65 years in June, and she is trying to get out and do more things. And seeing that I wasn't getting it, she said, "college was never an option for me. I was born in Sioux City, and had to go west to find work. I'm grateful for this opportunity to experience what college might have been like for me."

Wow! Let's do it again! Soon.

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