Second Acts: Grad School Now?
By Abigail Trafford
Living longer and staying healthy longer have created a whole new stage in the life cycle—a period of personal renaissance inserted somewhere after middle age but before very old age. The primary tasks of adulthood have been completed, for better or worse. And paradoxically, while you have more time, you also feel you have no time to waste. What next? What do I really want to do? The answers, for a growing number of people, are being sought—and found—within the walls of academe. Nearly 85,000 men and women over 50 are full-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs, according to the Department of Education. Nearly 435,000 are part-time students. About 120,000 are earning graduate degrees.
What's behind this trend? Here's what my research and interviews revealed.
Longevity's Imperative is Regeneration
As psychologist Philip Cowan, himself in his 60s, says, "For us, this time is an opening up. In my parents' generation, it was a closing down." By 50 or 60, explains George E. Vaillant, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and author of Aging Well, people are ready to move on from the career consolidation phase of life, with its intense focus on work and family.
Chances are you will have another "career" in relationships and in productive work. But what will it entail? To find out, you branch out. Vaillant describes this time as one of "empathetic leadership," when the need for achievement is replaced by the need for human connection and making a difference. Building on psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, Vaillant outlines the developmental tasks of this time of life: Generativity—giving to others, building community; becoming a Keeper of the Meaning, a steward of the culture; and Integrity—getting it all together and finding your spiritual center.
Gene Cohen, founder of the Washington DC Center on Aging, writes about the Liberation phase in your 50s and 60s when you get the freedom and courage to break out of the box of the past. Going back to school is well-suited to this work of reinvention and integration.
Yes, Your Brain Can Do It
There are normal changes in the brain with age, such as "decreased speed of learning and processing information," says Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, a neuropsychology expert at the National Institute on Aging. You have more difficulty "performing divided-attention tasks." But the healthy brain is a malleable and dynamic organ that benefits from activity, which means in the absence of disease, such as Alzheimer's, you can always increase your brainpower. In fact, studies have found that mental activity may extend your life just as effectively as physical exercise.
Life-Smarts Give You an Advantage
You may have more trouble recalling a name. But older adults have experience and know more. You're walking around with a rich internal library and a wealth of life experiences that contribute enormously to reasoning skills and judgment abilities. What's more, adult students have a sense of purpose and motivation that younger students frequently haven't yet achieved.
Intellectual Activity Often Leads to a Burst of Creativity
Bob Dodds worked for three decades as a lawyer for Mobil, putting in 18-hour days, negotiating deals with foreign governments. After Mobil and Exxon merged and Bob completed a special assignment for the merged company, he felt burned out. His wife suggested he go with her on an art tour to Sicily. That was the spark. Now, at 63, Bob is a part-time student of classics at Georgetown University, working toward a master's degree, maybe even a Ph.D., but that's not the point. Like a medieval monk freed from pedestrian chores, he is studying to answer the big questions. "Large parts of my brain didn't get used for 30 years," he says. "I'm just happy doing this. I love libraries. I love research. I love getting into all the nooks and crannies."
Bob wants to understand the big issues better: the use of power, the rise of resistance, the expression of dissent, the role of poets and humor. "Every once in a while, you get a zinger of insight," he says. "Pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Take the Peloponnesian War. You quickly see analogies," he continues. "Where Athens got into trouble…people objected to its hegemony, to the thrusting forward of an energetic, self-confident nation." Bob points to an incident when a U.S. spy plane was forced down by the Chinese. In the official press release, China objects to U.S. hegemony. "They used Thucydides's word: hegemony. I loved that connection."
Education Can Be a Ticket to the Next Career
Aida Nydia Munoz Rivera dropped out of school when she was 17 and went to work as a sales clerk at W. T. Grants in the ladies' underwear department. "I was folding nightgowns. Making $28 a week," says Aida, 70. She was a Puerto Rican teenager right out of West Side Story: flashing eyes, street smart, pretty, and poor. "I had a little bit of a mouth," she says.
At midlife, education was her salvation, she says. Her second husband, a teacher, encouraged her to go back to school. At 45, Aida got her high school equivalency and won a scholarship to St. Joseph's College. What she studied in books reinforced what she knew from experience. "Shakespeare is my teacher about life," she says. She made the Dean's List.
After her B.A., Aida earned a master's degree in bilingual education, all the while working full-time as a teacher. With her new degrees and 3.80 GPA, she got a $30,000 raise in one year. Then when Aida was nearly 60, she earned her master's degree in social work—opening the door to her current career as a family therapist. "That one put me over the top," she says. Today, she divides her time between Long Island and Puerto Rico doing what she loves: running a private practice counseling women who are victims of domestic violence.
More about lifelong learning
New Horizons for Learning
About the Author
Abigail Trafford is a columnist and former health editor at The Washington Post.
This article, which appeared in NRTA Live & Learn, Spring 2005, is excerpted from My Time: Making the Most of the Bonus Decades After Fifty, by Abigail Trafford. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by arrangement with Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved.
