Back to the Future?

Back to the Future?

The last time I waited my turn to register as an undergraduate at University was 50 years ago. But last week, there I was at Western Washington University waiting for my class schedule, campus map, meal ticket and dorm assignment. Except that now I was registering along with my eight year old granddaughter as a Grandparent at Grandparent U, a summer program at the university designed to bring together for an undergrad experience the two poles of “Lifelong Learning”, the grandparent and the grandchild.

The two poles of "Lifelong Learning": grandparent and grandchild

Registration: she may not have to fill her granddad's shoes, just his jacket.

For the next two days and one night the 46 pairs of grandparent/grandchild (ages 7 - 14) would be attending courses together, guiding each other through campus from classroom to auditorium to labs, sharing dorm rooms, eating with meal tickets at the student cafeteria, partying together and participating in some (but not all: no beer for example) typical freshman activities after dinner.

It was a brilliant idea for many reasons.

It gave lifelong learning for both generations a status that required no explanation, rationale or promotion. After all, the student in the next seat was just as likely to be a grandmother or grandfather as a 7 to 14 year old, competing with you to answer questions, being called on to contribute, making observations and cooperating on the same project, making the same mistakes. No talk here of aches, pains, aging, rapping, dating: we were all in the same boat, with more immediate and fundamental tasks to think about and cooperate on.

At another level, it familiarized the grandchildren with university life so it would seem the most normal thing for them to adopt when they got to their late teens and had to make a choice about their future. It would also ease those adjustment tribulations we, the grandparents, had encountered as freshmen because we just had no idea what it was like to live in a dorm, or to find one’s way, practically and figuratively, on one’s own.

University life, the normal thing

The paricipants at Grandparents’ U actually lived the typical freshman experience, and that meant it included partying, in this case a “tailgate” barbeque on the first evening, a movie and board games in the common lounge of the dorm and a tour of the sculptures on campus, presenting our electronic student meal ticket at the cafeteria, navigating the buffet and reading the warnings about the emphasis on security at the dorm and the stiff penalty for losing your key.

Experiencing the university cafeteria

By the way I have to learn not to call it a “dorm”. It’s now “student housing” or “residence halls”, and what a far cry it is from fifty years ago!

View from the residence hall

First of all, my university in Dublin didn’t provide student housing at all. Students lived in “digs” anywhere they could find a room with a family, bedsitter or flat in Dublin.

I didn’t need a map or GPS to find my lecture halls in Dublin as I did at WWU: they were all in one building. Coming to think of it, I didn’t need the map provided to get around the vast WWU campus either: my granddaughter already knew where each venue was.

In Dublin students wore jackets and ties to class and the professors academic robes. Of course part of the reason for that was self-preservation: the lecture halls and classrooms were grossly underheated as were most houses and public buildings at that time.

At WWU at registration we were each issued a t-shirt with the WWU logo and “Grandparents U” printed large across the chest. Everyone seemed to choose a size larger than needed, which meant that many of the kids were covered to their knees by the t-shirt. Fifty years ago we wouldn’t be caught dead wearing oversize clothes on campus. Now it was a fashion statement.




The grandparents too all changed into their t-shirts and wore them with pride, even though some of the young adult regular varsity students sneaked a second puzzled look when they noticed the word “Grandparents”. Maybe they too will be back in fifty years, being led to their classes by their grandkids.

Wait till her grandchildren see this.