A word about being an older student: It’s not a big deal. My friends ask about this from time to time, and my experience is, in short, that the classroom is ageless. I’d say most of my classmates at GSLIS West, at any rate, are in their late 20s to early 40s, and I gather at least one is early 60s. I’m pushing 50 and was last in school in 1989, right on the cusp of the internet revolution, so there’s been a very steep learning curve there — what do you mean my syllabus is online! Or my reading, or significant class discussion? And that’s for face to face classes. It’s not that I don’t know how to use the internet, it’s just that this context is new, I’m using it in different ways, and there’s an expectation of students having a certain level of competency. I like it; I’m developing a sense of ownership of the internet in a way I haven’t had after nearly two decades of extensive use. And I feel like I have a front-row seat to the information revolution we’re living through.

Certainly, my cultural references are different from someone 20+ years younger, and I have a greater wealth of experience to draw from, but that doesn’t necessarily give me an edge, except in the sense that library science seems to be one of those fields where all outside experience comes in handy. I was an older undergrad too, so to be in class with a variety of ages and experiences is familiar territory. What I’ve learned is that academically, intellectually, the classroom is the great leveling field and it’s important not to think either that you know it all or that you know nothing. Socially, I look for people to laugh with, and who are serious about their work, and not too cynical, so at Simmons my closest friend is a 30-year-old philosophy-computer geek who’s in both my classes. The 20-year difference is pretty irrelevant. I also gravitate toward the parents, especially parents of tweens, and there’s at least one in each of my classes. The big difference seems to be more about time and responsibilities, and there’s every permutation of that at GSLIS West. I can fall into jealously about my younger classmates, who tend not to have families. But then I remember they have full-time jobs, internships, huge undergraduate loans, and other responsibilities. Many classmates have long commutes: The geography draw is pretty wide—one comes from Albany, there’s several from the Berkshires, Brattleboro, Worcester, and northern and eastern Connecticut. Some classmates are parents and work and have significant commutes and I don’t envy them one bit. All in all, I feel grateful that I just live 20 minutes away, that I don’t have a full-time job, which gives me time to focus on my schoolwork, and that I am picking up some hours at my local public library. So while some think the grass is always greener, I’ve heard it said that if a group of people put all their troubles in the middle of a room and described them, everyone would leave with their own, they wouldn’t take someone else’s.

So that leaves technology. About that use of the web: Interesting to note that of my two professors this semester, the younger professor uses the web much more for the practicalities of class than the older one. The younger one uses Moodle (Simmons also uses eLearning) to post handouts, her weekly Powerpoints, and for various class discussions. Homework is often posted to the discussion list. She also uses a wiki for our resources. All incoming students are required to take a non-credit technology review, called the TOR — I recommend completing it before classes start, as you may not have time during the semester and you’ll use the skills you learn right away — so I knew vaguely about creating and editing a wiki page. The teacher just said, here’s the source wiki, I’ll assign everyone resources to review and you’ll be responsible for updating it in a timely fashion. And implicit was the understanding that if we knew how to do that, and if we didn’t, we were going to learn. (Fortunately, Simmons also has terrific resources for students, including workshops, and a technology fellow who helped me enormously in the beginning of the semester.)

My older professor uses the eLearning site for class, but in a different way, and not as extensively. There’s a discussion list but no one uses it. He lectures from handwritten notes, god bless him, so there’s no Powerpoints to print out, although he uses lots of PDFs, which he helpfully posts to the site. He’s not computer-phobic: Our work in that class involves extensive use of certain websites, so we’re online a lot in class and for homework. It’s just a different approach to teaching that I think is not unrelated to the age factor. Watching them, and watching my own experience, gives me a perspective on the big picture, the vastness and enormity of the internet revolution. These are tremendous times we’re living through, and as librarians we are on the cusp of it.

I share that age factor, personally. I am not particularly interested in the technical aspects of being a librarian. I don’t want to be designing web pages and fancy subject guides and taking classes in XML or whatever. At least, that’s not where my interests lie now, close to the end of my first semester. I also know that could all change, especially once I take the required courses in technology and evaluation. Who knew I’d love reference and want to take more? That’s the great thing about school, the world just opens up in amazing, unexpected ways.