Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

The more you know, the more you can recognize there are Emmenthaler-sized holes in your understanding of things. You sit in a lecture and you’re shocked to hear about something you’ve gotten wrong your entire adult life. But it doesn’t make you feel stupid.

I always thought “prehistoric” was dinosaurs and cavemen. Actually it describes everything that happened before things started getting written down. I thought our planet has seasons because something tilts back and forth twice a year. No.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

A lot of my friends can’t practice English at home—particularly when their spouses don’t speak the language. Every family has a member or two who avoids literacy classes because they’re self-conscious about sounding ignorant.

Having a job doesn’t always help, low-wage workers get clustered by language—they’re not hired to say things, just the opposite.

Newcomers have to work their way through our bog of a language, some arrive faster than others. Many have told me they look forward to having conferences with their kids’ teachers—in English.

They’re genuinely grateful for your patience when you talk with them. They’ll reward you by showing you recent family videos on their smartphones. They keep them right next to their translation apps.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

College professors know things about space aliens.

Lecturers have told us the K–Pg Extinction Event was the work of space aliens, that members of Roanoke’s lost colony were abducted by swamp pods and that higher mathematics are implanted through human nasal passages by Jovians (remember that sinus flare-up?). They talk about the Kardashians, Justin Bieber and the Loch Ness monster all the time.

After all these years, I now realize higher education isn’t about getting a job at all. Money’s nice, sure, but what’s more important is that we understand the world we live in.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

I pull into the parking lot and it’s relatively empty. It’s an omen.

During finals, students leave as soon as they complete their exams—the parking lots empty out early. Does it mean the kids are on top of their game, breezing through without breaking a sweat? Or are they blowing off all the questions they can’t answer? It’s hard to tell. There’s not much eye contact, not today.