INFLUX Magazine Spring 2024

“When you retire<br />

you can choose<br />

to be old and<br />

live in your old<br />

thoughts. Or, you<br />

can choose to be<br />

curious about<br />

the world.”<br />

—FRAN LINHART<br />

Fran Linhart sits in the back<br />

of the room, overlooking the class<br />

in Blegen Hall on March 20, <strong>2024</strong>.<br />

Photo by Fartun Hassan<br />

with music classes, she decided to keep<br />

going and enroll in more classes about<br />

the things she has always been curious<br />

about. This semester, she’s in a class about<br />

Christianity.<br />

“I wasn’t raised in a church so I want<br />

to try and understand it more,” she said.<br />

“Especially with everything that’s going on<br />

in the world right now.”<br />

Linhart spends a lot of time playing<br />

piano, singing and doing other work in<br />

churches, so the classes at the university<br />

allow her to understand the communities<br />

she has become a part of.<br />

Even though Benjamin Osborn, 55, is<br />

not old enough to qualify for the senior<br />

program, he has been taking classes at the<br />

university for the last ten years.<br />

“I came into some money so I didn’t<br />

have to work,” Osborn said. “I don’t want<br />

commitment and with classes, if I don’t<br />

want to come in, I can just turn the alarm<br />

off.”<br />

Osborn’s career was in computer<br />

science and he went to school for several<br />

years before he became so successful.<br />

“I graduated in the 2000s with a history<br />

degree and I went out to get a master’s in<br />

history. I started the Ph.D. program but<br />

then realized that I was not motivated<br />

enough to do that,” Osborn said.<br />

“A few years later I came back to be a<br />

computer science major, which was what I<br />

originally went to college for, and flunked<br />

out,” he said. “So I finished that and did<br />

networking. By the time I had enough<br />

money coming in where I didn’t have to<br />

work, I just kept taking classes.”<br />

Because Osborn isn’t old enough to<br />

qualify for the program, he has been<br />

paying full tuition to learn more. He<br />

takes mostly history classes, as well as<br />

psychology, economics and some computer<br />

science.<br />

He has taken several World War I and<br />

II classes that specifically address the<br />

relationships between the colonized and<br />

the colonizers. He learned about how<br />

the decreased technology gap during the<br />

First World War started to change other<br />

countries’ perceptions of the United States.<br />

This semester, he is taking History of<br />

Tourism.<br />

“We have talked about the impact on<br />

Indigenous people, and now we are getting<br />

into the environmental impacts,” he said.<br />

He is also taking an art class about<br />

Irish history. “It’s focusing on the 1500s<br />

and 1600s right now, and then the last few<br />

weeks will bring it up to the 1920s when<br />

the Irish Republic began.”<br />

Osborn is more motivated to come to<br />

classes when he has two in a day because<br />

that means he will be spending more<br />

time at the university learning than on his<br />

commute from Uptown.<br />

He said he plans on continuing to take<br />

classes until he runs out of stuff to learn or<br />

enroll in.<br />

Both Osborn and Linhart have gotten<br />

to enjoy learning and taking classes while<br />

also observing the social patterns of a<br />

different generation.<br />

“If you select, and you only stay around<br />

people your own age, you miss out,”<br />

Linhart said. “Being around young people<br />

is really exciting. We can learn so much<br />

just by being open.”<br />

None of Linhart’s friends or neighbors<br />

are enrolled in the program, but that hasn’t<br />

held her back.<br />

“There’s one guy in here that I’ve met in<br />

another class, another old senior,” she said.<br />

“But you have to get up, you have to drive<br />

here, you have to park. Gee. You have to<br />

walk. Not a lot of people are doing it.”<br />

Continuing to learn and be curious<br />

about the world correlates with positive<br />

aging, and this program allows seniors to<br />

continue thriving after retirement.<br />

34 <strong>INFLUX</strong> MAGAZINE SPRING <strong>2024</strong> SPRING <strong>2024</strong> <strong>INFLUX</strong> MAGAZINE 35