Baby Boomers U. S. (The Blog)

Monday Musings for Baby Boomers – Eggplants

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 03:58 AM PDT

The real BBUS post can be found here… Monday Musings for Baby Boomers – Eggplants by Joe Hauckes © Baby Boomers U. S. (The Blog) . Not on Senior Zen!

Smile!

Monday has always been a little bit of a let down, what with it being the beginning of the work week and all.

So to start things out on a bright note for the week, I bring you the…

Baby Boomers Monday Musings.

Eggplants

A grocer put up a sign that read “Eggplants, 25 each — three for a dollar.”

All day long, customers came in exclaiming: “Don’t be ridiculous! I should get four for a dollar!”

Meekly the grocer capitulated and packaged four eggplants. The tailor next door had been watching these antics and finally asked the grocer, “Aren’t you going to fix the mistake on your sign?”

“What mistake?” the grocer asked. “Before I put up that sign no one ever bought more than one eggplant.”

Hope that put a little smile on your face and Keep On Smilin’

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Eager Seniors Prepare for College

Posted: 15 Jul 2012 04:05 AM PDT

The real BBUS post can be found here… Eager Seniors Prepare for College by Joe Hauckes © Baby Boomers U. S. (The Blog) . Not on Senior Zen!

This is a Guest Post by Patricia Kowalski. If you would like to Guest Post for Baby Boomers US, check out our Guest Post for Us page.

These days, when people talk about "seniors" getting ready for college, they do not mean twelfth graders who are graduating from high school. Instead, they refer to people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s enjoying undergraduate life. Older students bring their wisdom, maturity, experience, and sense of urgency to campus with them, and they excel.

"There is no age limit on learning," says Megan Himes, a financial aid adviser at Ashford University. "Every day, I work with far more students in their 40s and 50s than I work with students in their late teens and early 20s." Himes agrees online universities have made higher education far more accessible for non-traditional students, and she notes, "My older students out-perform their teen-aged classmates by almost a full grade point."

On traditional four-year campuses, the average age of first-year students has steadily risen over the last decade. At San Diego State University, for example, the average "freshman" recently celebrated his or her twenty-ninth birthday. Recently retired professor Bruce Keitel says, "In any English 100 class, I could look across the classroom and see at least as many gray-haired and wrinkled students as kids who just learned how to pull-on the big-boy pants. In one class, I had a grandmother and grand-daughter attending college together. Grandma got better grades."

Every Reason is a Good Reason for Going Back to School

Retired seniors candidly confess the most powerful motivation for returning to the ivy-covered halls. "It's like a deep, satisfying draught from a potent fountain of youth," smiles Lois Daley, 62. More practical and realistic, educational advisors and employment counselors encourage working people to revitalize their careers and increase their value to employers by going back to college. They offer five compelling reasons:

Get the degree you always wanted.Thousands of baby-boomers who were not prepared for or could not afford college when they graduated high school now are going back to campus to earn the diplomas they always wanted. Retired seniors often qualify for grants, scholarships, and other financial aid that make going to class less expensive than staying home. "I got married and had children when I was 18," Lois Daley explains. "I always wanted to study art history, and I always felt more than a little envious of my girlfriends who went away to university. Now, I have the privilege of a second chance, and I cherish every minute of it."
Upgrade and update your professional knowledge and skills.The nation's leading hospitals are recruiting nurses with degrees in order to raise their accreditation scores. Therefore, thousands of working healthcare professionals have returned to college for bachelors and masters degrees. Similarly, fearing they will become as obsolete as their slide-rules, many engineers who earned their degrees in the '70s and '80s have gone back to school to update their technical skills or earn advanced degrees. In many school districts, teachers advance on the pay scale as they accumulate post-graduate units and degrees; many feel they cannot afford to not continue their educations.
Add professional certification to your resume.In some professions and many skilled trades, entry-level skills suffice at the beginning of people's careers, but they must add specialized training in order to advance. Some human relations positions, for example, require specific training in mediation, arbitration, disability benefits, and other areas of specialized practice. Some IT professionals supplement their degrees with certification in specific systems, applications or protocols.
Train for a new profession.Acknowledging that millions of "outsourced" jobs never will return to the United States, legions of displaced workers are returning to technical and trade schools or enrolling in college to prepare for new professions. The nation needs literally millions of new nurses and medical technicians, and many "empty-nest" mothers are putting their care and compassion to work in pursuit of nursing degrees. Many experienced secretaries have enrolled in paralegal programs, and many veteran bookkeepers have returned to college for degrees in accounting. Shirley Nelson, whose bookkeeping job fell victim to corporate cuts, admits, "Yes, I sometimes feel like Dorothy's Scarecrow who needed a diploma, not a brain; but my classes and classmates open new perspectives on old problems."
Satisfy your curiosity.Many 60- and 70-somethings return to college just to satisfy their curiosity or pursue their lifelong interests. "I've always been a reader," says John Alberts, 61, "but I never understood how really to study literature." Acknowledging he has no desire to become a teacher or professor, Alberts nevertheless insists, "I just want to learn all about how literary scholars and analysts find the deeper meanings in the classics."

Most seniors cite age-related concerns as the major roadblocks to returning to college. Generally, seniors fear they cannot keep up with "the kids." The kids, however, worry about keeping-up with the seniors. Alluding to her own coursework, Megan Himes says, "I always seek-out the older students in my online classes, because I know I can rely on them for simple, intelligent and insightful explanations of the most difficult materials and concepts. They never let me down." Himes stresses, "I cannot think of any good reason not to go back to college."

About the Author: Patricia Kowalski blogs about higher education, including online programs. If you are interested in getting an online degree in psychology, check out the top online psychology programs to find one that is right for you.