Published: February 16, 2011

Fordham attracts lots of adults in their graduate night classes, but there are quite a few who attend undergraduate classes full-time with regular college students. Even though they are few in number, I’ve shared classes with three of them who happened to all be women. While it can be a challenging experience, it can be an eye-opening one, too.

Even though my mother taught me to respect my elders, these older college students can be a challenge to work with. Don’t get me wrong, I love the age diversity at Fordham, but it can be a little awkward working on a lab project with someone who is also old enough to be your mother, and not to mention intimidating.

They have their annoying qualities, like hogging the professors after class to talk about their children’s afterschool activities, handing in their assignments early for review, being so determined in their opinions that they have no time to accept new ones and writing with color-coded pens and a highlighter so they can produce the best quality notes possible.

Even though as college students we are more open to accepting all people, sometimes it can be a struggle. Adults interrupt the normal flow of a classroom because sometimes they just seem out of place. Many of them are so set in their opinions that they have no time to accept new ones or step out of their boxes to accommodate new opinions or suggestions.

In a class debate, adults will not understand the events of a 20-year-old’s life because they were young in a totally different time period. Ideas, struggles and events we take to heart and have to deal with will be strange to them in many cases. However, if we use this opportunity to discuss their ideologies and make them understand where we are coming from, it can be an uplifting experience for both sides. Young adults will see that opening up, learning as well as teaching, can be beneficial to a more inviting classroom experience for all.

Sometimes, these adults aren’t that bad after getting to know them, talking to them and interacting with them. Dialogue can connect both sides.

I once worked on a group project with an older woman who was about 40 years old. I was intimidated because I thought she was going to be a replica of my mother, breathing down my back to get the assignment done the way she wanted it.

After working with her for three weeks, she saved me from procrastination, divvied up the work equally and gave me great ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Instead of using PowerPoint for a visual project, since she wasn’t computer savvy, we used our hands and our own creativity. We ended up cutting from magazines, using paper maché, markers and crayons. After looking at 20 PowerPoint presentations throughout the week, my professor seemed happy to see something different, and we got an A.

I’m in a class this semester with a staunch conservative for the first time. Living in New York City, I didn’t think they existed in great numbers here, but this woman caught me by surprise, and boy, does she voice her opinions. She almost sounds like a walking Republican spokesperson, and she doesn’t let a class of liberal youngsters hold her back from expressing her opinions, which she does by counter-debating students and the professor.

While I felt annoyed with her at first for not agreeing with what I thought was right, I now hold her in deep esteem because she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. This woman manages to be respectful while holding her own mind and doesn’t conform. I learned a lot from a side I never thought I’d ever listen to, like why she believes abortion is wrong and why she believes faith should be taught in schools.

It’s obviously a learning experience for both generations. We college kids get an idea of how older generations work and the reasons behind their opinions while they learn what youth culture is all about. Even though they may be staunch in their opinions and not relatable at times, we serve as bridges to one another’s worlds.

We never take the time to walk in their shoes, acknowledge the strides they are taking to return to school and get a degree to enhance their lives. While adults can disrupt the “natural college flow” as we know it, they can also enrich it, and we as the younger and less experienced generations can learn a lot from them.