Cycling Back to School in My Sixties

            The day after I finished my ride across Canada for my sister and Ovarian Cancer Canada, I registered for the winter term at my alma mater, The University of British Columbia.  I was interested in rekindling a love affair with the ivory-

towered that I had never quite got over, and while I had lost my head to this love in my youth, this time I was going to play it coy.  I was entering this time as a rogue ‘unclassified’ student, and was only going to make myself available for four months. 

            By the end of that sunny day in Chester, Nova Scotia, with my computer opened on the table in our campsite next to the Atlantic Ocean, I had managed to wriggle into three 2nd-year classes; one in philosophy (post-Aristotelian Greek), another in writing (creative non-fiction), and another in Islamic history (from Muhammed to Arab Spring).  Cycling across Canada had been a boon for the body; I was hopeful this dive back into the academic world would be manna for the mind.  All would become clear in six months time – in January, when the courses began.  In the meantime, lobster rolls, ceilidhs and Maud Lewis landscapes awaited us on this side of the country.

‘First Year’ Jitters

            Determined not to be called out by my age, and presumed mental decline, I decamped to Vancouver a week before classes began.  There were memos I didn’t want to miss, like where to access my course schedule, book list, campus wifi code, and how to get a library card and bus pass.  They all required some faith in my ability to navigate online systems, and a flight of congratulatory drinks to quaff whenever I emerged triumphant, card or code in hand.  Other tasks, like the requisite trips to Ikea, MEC, and bike shop to tune up a bike and scare up a campus bike locker, were dispatched with the zealousness of a first-year student. 

            The day before classes began, I rehearse my schedule, locating the lecture halls, and measuring fastest route between classes, with or without a bathroom break.  The prospect that I

may stand out from the crowd in any way – by fumbling into a class late, asking questionable questions in a lecture hall of 100 students, experiencing paralysis when asked to log on to an in-class learning app, or wearing pink in a sea of black North Face jackets and grey Blundstone boots – mortified me, and I was taking every precaution to minimize the chance that I would appear anything other than a perfectly capable twenty-year-old.  And not reveal the ‘imposter syndrome’ I was desperately trying to disguise.

Blast-Off!

            The first day of winter term arrives in classic Vancouver style: cold, blustery, sheets of sideways rain.  The long-

waited-for ‘come-back’ bike ride to campus would need to wait.  There is a quiet bus stop close to my apartment in the West End, and while waiting, the homeless man huddled in the shop doorway behind me, rearranges his fort of cardboard piled against the wind.  I enter the bus, and discover that the sure-footed are sent to the back, as the entire front of the bus is now reserved for those with strollers, walkers, and assorted other mobility aids.  I settle into a warm and dry

seat, and the bus driver, not glowering like the ones I remember, calls out frequently to ‘mind our step’, or ‘hold on’ when s/he needs to suddenly stop or turn.  Passengers reciprocate, throwing ‘thank-yous’ to the bus driver when they leap off the bus. Basking in the convivial atmosphere, I recall how I would dread the sullen and soggy ride to and from campus so many moons ago, doing my best to stay out of the way of intoxicated or unhinged passengers.  All this bright and civil behaviour was encouraging – would this be the new order on campus as well?

            The history lecture hall is couched in the pharmaceutical science building – vaulted ceilings with flared chrome buttresses, cleverly embedded lecture halls. I can just make out a young man at the front of the hall beneath the giant screen.  He is dressed in a black turtle neck with corduroy blazer and jeans and is queuing up his computer, glancing frequently at his watch to time his ‘entrance’.  After a brief welcome, and a

brainstorming session about how we all conceptualize ‘Islam’, he rolls out the course syllabus, and what will be expected of us in the next four months.  His words are clear and measured and inflected with a German accent.  As he unravels the course, and describes the places we’ll go, the more unfamiliar the topography is, the more in love, all over again, I feel. 

            The scenario repeats itself in the other two classes; spacious halls, with sound systems at senior- friendly levels, and young, keen and

approachable professors spelling out the fantastic voyages ahead.  Students beside me are silent, alternatively focused on the professor or their phone screens. Very few are taking notes. The rustling of books and backpacks to signal “I need time to get to my next class” begins before class officially ends.  I can see that if there is going to anything to make me conspicuous in this crowd, it’s going to be my dialed-up enthusiasm.

In A New Light

            In addition to the edge-of-your-seat lectures, I am besotted with just about everything

else about being back at school, and in the city of Vancouver.  For one, there is a beautiful sense of familiarity – the campus ‘village’ perched at the edge of the sea, a flurry of buildings and boulevards and ‘malls’ all exuding an air of importance or mystery, the ungainly music building across from the grand Old Auditorium, the clock tower, the elegant sweep of avenues in and out and around the university, and the bus route along the long east-west corridor of the city, still home to a clutch of Greek restaurants and small Korean grocers. 

            And then there is the delight in experiencing the new zeitgeist in the city which said ‘we are an inclusive, tolerant, and progressively-minded

society’. Courtesy and kindness ruled the day, in interactions on the streets, in shops, on transit, and on the busy bike lanes and greenways.  On campus, student unionists have negotiated a bundle of changes to address the safety and diversity of the student population at UBC.  Kiosks, where students can access emergency services are stationed prominently throughout the campus. Course outlines include academic concessions for those with a disability or experiencing any personal distress. Dispensations when needed, the ability to appeal one’s grade, expecting an environment free from harassment, or discrimination – these are now enshrined in a student’s rights.

            Yet, academic rigour at the university remained gloriously unchanged.  The courses challenged me, at times the

texts and required reading reminiscent of my graduate work, not second year studies, and the roster of day-to-day expectations (attendance was taken!) demanded the singular attention I was delighted to give. I loved that I got to be part of a coterie of inquisitive minds, to be lectured to each day, and inspired to explore the readings ‘curated’ by the instructors.  What an

incredible privilege to indulge in a learning fetish at a world-class university a mere 45 minute ocean side bike ride away from my apartment! Overhearing students who have skipped classes to ski, changed others because they were more than a 10-minute walk away, or haven’t started an assignment that is due tomorrow, I realized that, at my age, I had no time for complacency.  Youth is not wasted on the old.

In A New World

            And just to make my ‘come-back’ term all that memorable, a virulent virus finished it off! On March 11, a

coronavirus – Covid19 – is declared global in its reach, forcing us off campus, and on-line. The daily ritual of biking or transiting to school and sharpening pencils for the upcoming class were sadly shelved, and I learned to look forward to lectures live-streamed into my living room.  It wasn’t too much of a hardship.  Provoking us to consider oral histories from Belarus journalists, scales of meaning according to the Neo-Platonists, and “Westoxification’ according to Muslims – these ideas still occupied my day.

Luckily, I had no final exams, and with the submission of final essays, I had made good with my goal of completing my first leg of life as a senior academic explorer.  And, inadvertently, as a ‘campus casualty’ of a pandemic the likes of which had not been seen in a 100 years.  Does it get any more dramatic, and memorable than that?