I recently celebrated my two-year anniversary of graduating from college at the age of seventy-five, with two degrees: an A.A. in English and a B.A. in English Creative Writing. 

Summa Cum Laude, baby.

And so I’ve been thinking a lot about the eight-year journey to those degrees, first five years at Long Beach City College and then three years at California State University, Long Beach, especially in the shadow of my recent stroke four months ago. 

I gained a ton of insight into myself, people and institutions. Most of it is good, some of it not so good, and some of it, who cares? 

From the age of sixty-six to seventy-five, in a drug- and alcohol-free state (now sober for nearly fifteen years), you can see, literally and philosophically, that the world from 2016 to 2024 to now was altered in ways we can only begin to understand.

Within that changed world, the institutions of higher learning stand out as a platform from which we can explore and build a theoretical framework to explain what is going on. 

It was a way of giving me some relief from going stark raving mad. 

There must be a reason for this period in the history of all civilizations when time is stopping (maybe even stopped in some cases). 

The clock of progress is being slowly (no exaggeration, though quickly is a better description) pulled, pushed, shoved, kicked, yanked, and dragged backward.

When I think about all the years since Brown v. Board of Education and the passage of the Civil Rights Laws in the sixties, I envisioned a world where we were moving forward through a period of enlightenment, freeing ourselves from antiquated roles of gender, class, and race, pushing the boundaries of what is possible on earth and in the heavens, and committing ourselves to serving each other. 

Then 2016 and 2024 happened.

I never thought I would live to see the day, or the years, when I would wake up one morning (one of many), look at my phone, and swear I saw the date as December 31, 1953.

What does all this have to do with college? 

During those eight years, I was a witness to countless students of all ages, classes, races, genders, dreams, ambitions, financial burdens, one or two unhoused (those I knew about) and those at risk of being unhoused, bearing full loads of classes while they also worked one, two, as many jobs as they could bear (when did they sleep?) and still able keep up with 4.0 GPAs along with being heavily involved in campus activities and some cases as community volunteers. 

I bow before them. 

Their energy, willingness to challenge and ask questions, seeking answers, not excuses, confronting the orthodoxy, and understanding what is happening and why.

I’m not just talking about twenty-year-olds. I met students in their thirties, forties, and fifties who were inspired to rethink, review, and reflect on the world as they thought it was and the beliefs they took for granted because, well, that’s what they always believed. 

They then decided to dream big and to change the world. 

You read the sensational headlines about students shouting down speakers and protesting and storming the Bastille, but what you don’t read about are all those students who are challenging the status quo by studying their tushes off so they can become doctors and nurses who will go into underserved communities or to be the future executive directors of the nonprofits who will organize the unhoused and build housing for them and run food banks or the future public interest lawyers or the teachers, artists, musicians, journalists (trust me it’s a long list) that will contribute to the progress of humanity and will not be pushed back into a dark past, a dark period when this nation was not serving all of its citizens or soon to be citizens. 

To shatter the myth that America was as great as some delusional people want you to believe. I know; I’ve lived through some of that time, and it was not as great as they would like you to believe. 

But, to make it constantly work to accept what is great and to make the rest better.

Blame the professors, the advisors, the staff and tutors at the resource centers, and all the people who keep a Community College or University running. 

They’re to blame for turning often clogged brains entering the first year of college (of any age) into critical thinking, curious, dreaming, optimistic individuals who will overcome the forces of a society that is determined to hold back progress.

College should be about a transitioning from one stage of a person’s life to one armed with the tools to not only pursue and build a career but also bring a boatload of knowledge, wisdom, and life experiences to their own lives and the society they intend to live in for the rest of their lives.

Back then, I lived in a box constrained by drugs and alcohol and the limited oxygen of that box that never allowed me to breathe the fresh air of an unlimited atmosphere of knowledge. 

Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot over those years. Much of it through on-the-job experience and street wisdom. 

However, something was always missing. 

I always felt constrained by this mind locked in that box, even as the box grew bigger and bigger as I grew older. 

Studying and graduating from college helped me free myself. 

I learned not to fear climbing out of that box and to stand tall upon the accomplishments of those eight years and the seventy-five years before that.

Wisdom earned at any age is the future we all need now more than ever.