I Am A Student - Participating in Lifelong Learning

Whenever we receive applications and forms to complete, I always pause at the field marked: occupation.  Most of the time I comply with the expected..."retired."  But occasionally I write in "student."

In 2000 when Jay and I retired, we had T-shirts made that said, "Not Retirement...Re-Creation" and that was our mantra as we set out in this new chapter of our life..to explore, learn, grow in areas that had been left untapped or put on the back burner during our working years.

Retirement T-shirt

One of the first avenues we found to aid us in our quest was a Learning-in-Retirement organization called Omnilore.  There are many types of lifelong learning programs, usually under the auspices of a local college or university, but we found Omnilore to be unique in that it uses an active learning format.  The members run the show...creating their own curriculum that is offered three times a year. At this time, members sign up for the course of study that interests them and they are put into Study/Discussion Groups of 8 to16 people.  OK...so what is unique about that you might ask?  Well, the members are both the students and the teachers.  Each member selects a topic related to the group's subject to be studied and then does extensive research on the topic and, at an assigned class, teaches what has been learned during the research to the rest of the class members.

We recently received our class assignments for the upcoming Spring Trimester.  I am taking two classes this time: one class will study the Cuisine of the Mediterranean, using food historian, Clifford Wright's, book and the other will study a collection of short stories written by Californian authors about the state of California.  I already have a stack of research books to begin working on my chosen topic for the first class..."The History of the People and the Cuisine of the Island of Sicily."  50% of my Italian heritage springs from Sicily and I am drawn to its story like a duck to water.  I have been pouring through fascinating books, calling out to Jay various factoids as I read them, like..."Did you know there were over 19 occupations of Sicily by various cultures?" ...a people always occupied but never conquered!  or "Did you know that it was the Arabs who brought sugar cane and sweets to Sicily?"...ah, cassata, gelato, cannoli!

So it has been 10 years, 30 trimesters, approximately 60 courses and research projects.  I have learned about Impressionist Painting, Bach, The Italian Renaissance, Islam, the countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and India, Immigration, the Genome, Globalization, the Food Industry, Jazz, Ethics, Energy to name a few.  Can't you just imagine what a conversationalist I am at a social gathering!!  In the process I have stayed informed about the world and discovered new interests that never hit my radar screen before.  Jay and I love learning and we love teaching.  We have gone from using little index cards with our notes to full-blown PowerPoint Presentations as we share our research.  If the current research on the brain is correct, then hopefully I am giving my gray matter a work out...developing new connections, synapses.  There is a whole world out there.  There is so much to learn and explore.  Who ever said retirement was boring?