There was a woman in my Cultural Archaeology class—back in 2001—who was about sixty years old. She seemed very kind, had one of those nice smiles that makes you look forward to the latter half of your life. She was much older than most of us, of course, and as a newly transplanted college kid I was still mystified by the notion of school as anything more than obligation. I could not accept that education could be enjoyable, let alone the hours of work that it takes to complete papers and homework assignments. This was also back when college didn’t cost so much so it wasn’t difficult to get into a school and continue plodding along with the old ways.

Anyway, this woman whose name escapes me, she was about sixty and in a class full of teenagers. She was also the most respectful and studious by my estimation. She and the professor had the honest to god adult conversations that none of the rest of us really know about. Not the eighteens, the nineteens, or any of those twenties. They were kids, that is to say we were. She was talking about that whole being old and in a classroom full of us and she said, “I’m just a career student. I always want to learn.” Which, again, was baffling as all hell. She smiled, of course, so I knew she was real in the way arrogant youths aren’t. I trusted my gut on that one. I don’t remember how she did in the class but I’m willing to say that she did damn well, probably top of the class if not near. Now she’s probably in her seventies and who knows what she’s up to. I like thinking she never stopped learning.

I forgot why I was writing this, to be honest. I just remembered her. It’s possible I’d been thinking about education and money. Money’s good for many things, which is probably why we want and need it, but a lot of those big things, houses and the like, just don’t interest me. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps when I’m older and wiser. Until then I look at money and all I think is that’s two years of school, or that’s a car I might need to get from A to Z. And I think of how I have things to learn and places to be. I’m appreciative of it and kind of don’t want to get wiser than always wanting to learn. Goddamn right I do.