I love being back in school. I also think that these four-week classes are the only way to fly. It can be very educationally effective to focus on one subject intensely. Some colleges are structured to work this way year round – you could do sixteen hours in a term. I had two new classes start Monday and my educational psychology class is fabulous, the other one is self-study.

In psychology there are thirty-seven of us in a smallish room such that there are only three open chairs. It’s been like going to a very productive, if slightly claustrophobic, group therapy (3:30-7p.m.). Three quarters of us carried over from the last session so we already know each other and are comfortable jumping in to difficult issues, speaking in front of one another and arguing respectfully. And just like last session in the Philosophies of Education class, the level of discussion is high. It’s so much fun to be around that many smart people, most of whom are at the top of their game in a wide variety of disciplines. Only eight of us are English types and I am the single Philosophy and Religion guy.

Brad, take a class. I think I’m going to be perpetually enrolled. Not that this is a bad thing, but I believe I am institutionalized to function better when I have a class to think about.

On an unrelated note I’ve been thinking about my age of late. Having just turned thirty two I am feeling for the first time the proximity of what I take to be my next major milestone: forty. Eight years passes quickly. I seem to have left the last three in my other pair of jeans.

I don’t really feel my age the way some of my peers do. I have a buddy Mat who was in the Peace Core in Africa for a number of years and I think the privations of that work make him look a good fifteen years older than me.

For my part, I have randomly done some form of yoga off and on most of my life and as a consequence I am still physically quite flexible. My hair, though not the bright red it once was, is still thick and shows no sign of recession with not a single gray hair to concern me. My eyesight does not yet require augmentation in any form.

I know I have good genes. My parents are both in their early seventies and neither one look or act a day over sixty. My grandparents on both sides were active in sports (my great uncle George was a downhill skier until he broke a leg at 84), work, etc. into their early eighties and they all lived into their late nineties after smoking and drinking in relative moderation nearly all of their nearly hundred years of life. I shouldn’t bank recklessly on the so-called Methuselah gene, but the force does seem to run strong in our family. Still, thirty-two does seem to be a good age to get on with things. Maybe I want a family after all. Maybe, and I’m taking baby steps here, the Peter Pan that I am can grow up just a little bit.