So I am sitting in my second grad school class, this time armed with a laptop, which I’m not quite sure what to do with, but I feel it makes me fit in a bit more…well as much as a 50 something year old woman can fit into a grad school class with millenials…. The professor says “If you are a senior plus” please let me know. I look around, hopefully, seeking out another golden girl in this class full of young people who look like they should be sitting in a coffee shop gossiping like on the show “Friends” which I just realized, also dates me!
I do spot one woman who looks like she may have been born before the dawning of smart phones, IPads and maybe…just maybe had to use a typewriter (manual) in her undergrad days. I make a point of walking out with her after class, which is fairly easy since we get stiff after sitting for three hours and are slower leaving than the other students.
But I digress yet again…I hear the phrase “senior plus” again and the professor repeats to approach her after class. I panic thinking “okay, I’m a senior, but what constitutes a senior plus??” Am I that old?? I feel a renewed panic as I now think I may be older than I thought. Fortunately the panic of my age was short-lived as I began to panic over something new….the class content. I quickly lose myself in the class trying to keep up with note taking, while following the Power point….I look around me, the other students with the exception of the potential Golden Girl and myself are taking notes, highlighting Power Point texts, chatting with their boyfriends, shopping online all at the same time. I am still working on typing in http://www.gmu.edu…sigh….I somehow make it through and when class is over, I struggle to my feet, willing my stiff knees not to betray me, when I see a young woman approach the professor. She looks to be all of 21. The other Golden Girl is starting to hobble over to the professor as well….as we limp to the desk we hear the young woman say “I’m a senior plus”. Golden Girl and I look at each other confused…then we hear the rest of the conversation, which explained that a senior plus is actually a student who is beginning her first year of grad school while completing her senior year of undergrad simultaneously. Golden Girl and I hobble out to the parking lot, happy that we may be seniors, but at least we are not what we feared….so old that we are called senior pluses. I learn to take success in small increments these days.
New Endings 