As an older student (starting a masters at a 'youngish' 54), I arrived with plenty of real-world knowledge and 'conceptions.' (If you have had them this long, and came by 'em honestly, they are no longer PREconceptions.) It might look like baggage to the pedagogue, even one who is my contemporary, because he or she is so used to looking at relatively blank slates.
You know you are learning when you personally experience paradigm shift.
This is the mental equivalent of going back to the gym after a lapse, and selecting a personal trainer who acknowledged, but just, that you are different from supple young things that seem made for overexertion and subsequent tissue repair.
I have not been asked to leave my past at the gate, but no one will carry it in for me here, either. I was admitted to the academy, now I have to admit the academy into me.
I am looking for intellectual dialogue, if not communion, which I could find on occasion 'before,' but in my school's mostly-commuter population, the chemistry is all wrong. Everyone is always rushing to or from campus, and now I understand why there is no suitable hangout—nothing remotely resembling one, anywhere within a mile of the campus, even—for the kind of intellectual sparring that I craved as an undergrad and in all the aeons since...
The present intellectual 'boot camp' has me in cold-turkey withdrawal from the very stimulation I anticipated. I could use that succor, and kvetching here in monologue only seems to worsen the itch.
It looks like I may make it to the point where I 'pass' boot camp. Guess I will know when the drill-sergeants start saluting back!
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I can really identify with your statements as I have my set of hard earned conceptions ("baggage") having been kicking around this world for more years than you. Those paradigm shifts are coming fast and furiously.
In addition to paradigm shifts, there is the mingling with people 40 years younger than I am who have grown up in a different world than I did.
And, yes I miss the hangout spots and intellectual sparring also. People in our classes don't even have time to get to know one another and are reeking with stress caused by excessive numbers of assignments that they crank out as fast as possible just to get through any way they can. When do young people get to reflect? The only time I get to talk with classmates is if we arrive early to class or if the professor is late, so we take a few minutes to look at one another and speak.
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