Over the past nine years, 75-year-old Amherst resident Cheryl Wilson has moderated two seminars on Jane Austen and taken seminars on topics such as Iran’s culture and history as well as Timbuktu and its ties to Muslim intellectuals through the Five College Learning in Retirement (LIR) program. Among the greatest lessons of the program for her is that she has much more to learn.
Wilson is finding her knowledge of the world is expanding and her understanding of history is deepening. Currently undertaking what she describes as a “heavy duty” seminar on Negotiating the Peace After WWII, Wilson chose German colonies in Africa as a presentation topic within the subject.
“I’m learning a great deal. I can’t believe how ignorant I was,” she said. “I had no idea that Germany had colonies in Africa, which were taken away from Germany after the war. And so, I learned about four countries in Africa and their histories and it’s been very enlightening.”
Wilson finds her relationship with learning sustaining her connection to the world around her. She even had a friend from the program still taking seminars until he passed away.
“I had a good friend who died a year ago who was in his 90s and, until the last year of his life, he was taking one and two classes every year,” she said. “It keeps you alive and caring about the world around you.”
Five College Learning in Retirement is a program that engages retirees in seminars on various topics. The no grades, no formal papers seminars in locations including Amherst College, Smith College, Applewood in Amherst, and UMass University Without Walls give individuals the chance to broaden their horizons of knowledge.
Prospective participants can speak with moderators about seminars at the spring 2020 Program Preview and Open House on Sunday Nov. 17 in the Willets-Howell Center at Mount Holyoke College. The event will run from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Spring 2020 seminars will be posted under the programs tab on LIR’s website.
“It’s a great to learn about other things, it’s a great way to meet people who are in your generation,” said Five College LIR’s president Jake Greenburg. “When you retire, sometimes you don’t know what to do or how to keep busy and the benefit of this organization is you have a chance to learn about a lot of things (and to) socialize with a lot of people that you’ve never met before.”
Greenburg said that seminars are peer-led by moderators who pick out course materials and form seminar structure. Participants are required to lead their seminars for one hour each based on topics provided by the moderators. To Greenburg, this system of learning provides a no-pressure approach that’s conducive to a good learning environment.
“The advantage is that not only are you listening to other people within the organization, you’re working also in terms of presenting something that others can learn from,” he said.
According to LIR’s website, the program got its start in the area in 1989. Modeled after the Harvard Institute of Learning in Retirement, in the spring of its opening, the program saw five seminars with about 40 retirees present. Greenburg said over the years the program has seen steady growth. There are about 270 active participants and members today.
There is no set age restriction, but since the seminars are held during working hours, participants tend to be people of retirement age.
“We’re always encouraging new membership and they shouldn’t be afraid to be part of a seminar,” said Greenburg. “It’s a real equal partnership with everybody in each seminar and everyone encourages everybody to partake in it.”
Seventy-three-year-old South Hadley resident Antonia Woods is slightly new to this specific LIR program. The Mount Holyoke College grad is back in the Valley after 20 years in Boston, where she participated in the Learning in Retirement at Harvard for 13 years.
Throughout her four years at the Five College’s LIR, she’s enjoyed her colleagues’ hour-long reports. She noted that structure is the main difference between Harvard and the Five College’s programs.
“I’ve been quite impressed with the quality of reports. I actually didn’t think I would like (it) that much,” Woods said. “Every week you get a different person and you get their take on whatever it is we’re studying. So, I think that’s probably been my favorite part so far.”
Although Woods jokingly said she’s “kinda burned out” after 36 years of teaching, she enjoys learning from the student’s seat.
“I love being a teacher, but I love being a student even more. I like learning new things and I like discussing things with colleagues,” she said. “So, it’s just something that I really enjoy doing.”
On Thursday mornings at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, four participants and two co-moderators are writing and reflecting during a seminar called Writing to Remember.
The seminar prompts participants to write about parts of their lives to share with the group. To strengthen the writing skills of participants, listeners make comments on what they liked and what could use improvement. There’s even a trip to Pan-Asian restaurant Ginger Garden in Amherst at the end of the semester.
In Parish Hall of the church, seminar moderator Catharine Porter is there to turn on the heat, organize refreshments, guide conversation, and keep time. She also writes two papers and shares them aloud, just as the others do. Porter said that hearing about others’ experiences triggers her own personal recollection of her own life and personal experience.
“There’s a double reward when we share. Not only do we get to talk about the person’s paper but then we ‘oh, I remember because I had that sort of experience myself,’” she said. “So, you sort of develop this sort of commonality with the person who was reading or the whole group for the matter.”
Gathered around a table with pads of paper, participants are given the freedom to write about any part of their life they’d like to reflect on. Many say their families and the desire to pass on memory are the reason they write.
“I always send mine to my whole family and sometimes they read them,” 74-year-old Jim Rooks said.
As a semi-retired lawyer and legal writer, editor, and researcher, Rooks has written over 16 memoir pieces throughout his years of participation.
“One of which is embarrassing, so I’ve left out a lot,” he said.
“If mine gets positive comments, I’ll send mine to them,” laughingly adds 67-year-old John Conant, the self-designated “baby in the group.”
Conant’s father would document family stories. Before retirement, his brother did the same. Now Conant feels it’s his turn, taking on the “almost genetic” torch of memoir scribe.
The group joked freely with one another, making it a comfortable atmosphere for personal stories and touching memories to be shared.
“Some of us have been together for quite a while and others come in new and we just all blend together as a community… we all just sort of have a very symbiotic relationship,” Porter said.
Trish Callard of Northampton, 75, is co-moderator alongside Porter. Inspired by her four adult children to write about her life, she’s found that she likes to write about topics that “stir” her as well as having a community of people to exchange those topics with.
“It’s wonderful to be able to get to know other people’s lives, how they’ve lived it, and just different memories they want to share with one another,” she said.
Brooklyn native Monroe Rabin, 79, has written things about everything from his schooling experience to his mother’s experience with immigrating from the Carpathian Mountains in Romania before the First World War.
By penning memoirs for about four years, Rabin discovered a method in which to expand upon memory itself, echoed in the very title of the seminar.
“As you write, you start remembering more and more things,” said Rabin. “So if I just feel I want to write about this part of my life but I don’t know if I remember everything, as I’m writing I start remembering more and more things.”
For more information on the Learning in Retirement Program, visit 5clir.org.