it is not just that I tire so much more easily. Heck, I should not expect to be able to push myself as I did as a college student, a status I held until age 27. Or even as a doctoral student while teaching full0time - that we true through the early years of the last decade.
There are several things that confront me with my aging. The first is that 30 days from today I will turn 65. The inexorable approach to that momentous birthday cannot be avoided, and I expect I will somehow find time to reflect a bit more as the date approaches.
It was also what I did this evening. I went to a recital. Of a graduating senior from University of Maryland. I was invited by Facebook. By the student. Whom I taught as a 10th grader, then had as the lead in our musical production of Seussical.
I saw her, and I saw other students. And realized how quickly time has gone by.
My first students were 8th graders in 1995-96. They would have graduated from high school in 2000.
I arrived at the high school in which I teach in 1998. Then most of my students were 9th graders, although each year there were a few seniors. Those freshmen graduated, at least most of them, in 2002, and are now 26 and 27 years old. Those that were seniors that year could be approaching or at 30.
Some are already parents.
There were other former students at the recital. One is now married to one of her classmates from high school, someone else I taught. He and his twin brother both went to West Point, and one of them is currently deployed to Iraq. They are both 1st Lieutenants.
I don't always recognize former students, although sometimes I can recognize that I know them but have trouble putting a name to the face before me. Usually once I have the name the memories come flooding back. One young lady now a senior at Maryland had a hair style so different I knew I knew her, but had to ask her name. As soon as she told me I reminded her of the final project she did with two other students as a 9th grader in US History - she told me she never worked so hard for one project. I also remembered that she was a big fan then of Toby Keith, on whom she had a massive crush.
I am getting old. I tire more easily.
I'm tired now.
I have 3 days left of Spring Break. I have two more book review to write, a diary on an interesting organization that deals with family literacy, and some paid evaluation of proposed lesson materials for online instruction.
I won't have too much time to wallow in self pity towards my increasing decrepitude. But I feel it, boy do I feel it.
Still, I plan to stick around of a bit longer - as a teacher, as a blogger, even just as someone still alive. In part it is because I am still trying to figure out what I am going to be when I grow up. If I ever do grow up.
Have a nice evening.