Participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

What does aging mean to you? In general, aging means the process of getting older. Duh! In this Blogging from A to Z April Challenge, I will be writing about my own life at 82.

Thinking about aging, I’ve complained a lot lately that I’ve had not training or education in getting older. I’ve compared aging to marrying and parenting. I never took courses in how to be a wife or how to parent. And, with giant-sized blinders on, I’ve said the same about aging. I’d searched my high school and higher ed transcripts in my mind—where were the courses titled Intro to Aging or Advanced Concepts of Aging?

Last week, while thinking of how to approach the topic of aging, the word theories showed up inside of my forehead. How could I have forgotten? Or successfully repressed?

It was springtime in the late 80s. I was meeting with my dissertation committee to discuss my prelim exams, oral exams I had to pass before proceeding with the research project for my PhD. Well, one of them said they were not that well-acquainted with me or the totality of the coursework I’d taken, therefore they didn’t feel prepared to assess my answers to an oral exam. The only other option was for me to write papers that would document that I had the requisite knowledge.

The remaining faculty did not seem happy about this, but the vote had to be unanimous. They decided I should write three papers instead—one on my research topic (the concept of leisure), a comparative paper of research methods (qualitative vs quantitative), and, because I was going to be interviewing older people, the committee told me my third paper had to be on the psychosocial theories of aging.

How could I have forgotten that I’d spent a full month on each paper during that summer break from teaching?  How could I be saying I knew nothing academic about aging simply because I’d never taken a course on it? Was I so stuck into thinking about taking a course that I’m no longer capable of putting two and two together and saying, “I never took an actual course from a teacher, but I spent a month teaching myself about how persons age and wrote a 30ish-page paper on it?”

Do you have any glitches like this?

I still remember the gist of that “theories” paper on aging. The three psychosocial theories of that day were activity (the older person stays active and thrives on being active), continuity (the older person continues to do activities they’ve always enjoyed), and disengagement (as they age, older persons begin to withdraw from the busy life they used to live.)

Read more here: Theories of Aging: Psychosocial and Psychological (Study.com)

Reading about these theories now at my age, I can identify with aspects of each one. How about you?