August 21, 2020--National Senior Citizens Day
What does it mean to be a senior? In high school, it means you run the school. You have been there the longest of the student body population, so you have tales to tell. It means that everybody kowtows to you, at least the other students do. You look at the freshmen, and think how young and naive they are. In college, there is a certain expectation from others when you are a senior. Your classes are more to your liking because they are almost all in your major. In addition to that, you are also met with more mature treatment from other adults, namely professors. If you made it that far, I suppose, they feel they can treat you more as a colleague, or at least as someone who knows how to meet their expectations. I once had a professor keep one of my essay papers when I was a senior. I had made a good grade (surprise!), and he asked me if he could keep it. I graciously said yes because it did not occur to me to say no. He was my professor, after all. Why would he keep it? The answer I came up with is surprisingly egotistical. I suspected that the prof had used my ideas, made them better, and published them in his own paper. It was the only reasonable answer I could conjure. I never had to courage to really check, however. It would have involved so many complications. However, thanks to Google Scholar, I can now say with confidence that was not the case. Boy, was I off the mark, or the rails--you decide. And now I wonder, what is in store for my own senior citizenship? Will I need to purloin ideas from younger, wet behind the ears writers? Someday quite soon, I will be among those who have been here on earth the longest, but hopefully, I will still have tales to tell. |
AuthorKaren Schwabenland--Keeper of a daily blog of written matter, reporter of events large and small, and charlatan extraordinaire Archives
September 2022
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