For most of us, our senior citizen years are a time to relax, maybe pursue a hobby, travel or just relax and let life go by.  But, for many, retirement isn’t just a time to lay the goals of life down.  It is a time to look back over life at the unfinished challenges and then go back and finish them.  And for many, an unfinished goal in life is to go back and get that degree.  Whether it is finally graduating from high school, finishing your bachelor’s degree or starting and finishing a masters or PHD, it’s a big challenge to go back to the classroom and get that certificate, especially when you do that as a senior citizen.

So why do we do it?  This may be a question your children ask when they see you going after such an ambitious goal so late in life.  But when you think about it, we as senior citizens have a right to be a bit offended by the question.  Where is it written that we are denied the right to better ourselves just because we are in the later years of life?  Implicit in the question is the implication of, “What is the point of you getting a degree since you are not going to do anyting productive in retirement and you are so close to death?”

The last thing we as senior citizens want is to be seen as people who are just sitting around waiting to die.  Many a senior citizen has started an entirely new career and accomplished great things after 50.  With the advances in medical science today, it’s perfectly logical that you could live 20-30 years or more “in retirement”.  That is plenty of time to accomplish great things.  And starting out this era of life with a good education makes just as much sense as a youth doing so as they start out on their first career. 

This is not to say that going back to school is going to be easy.  If finishing your high school degree is the goal, you are going into an alien world and one that was probably pretty hostile the first time you were there.  Your presence in the high school or college classroom is going to be the source of some humor and you might take some teasing for being there.  But those same kids will come to admire what you are doing and enjoy having “grandpa” in class with them each day.

On top of the social situation you may create in a high school or college classroom, school is a challenge.  You will have to get used to being in the classroom and listening to lectures, reading textbooks, taking notes, doing papers and taking exams all over again.  If you go after an advanced degree and take several classes, you will be a very busy senior citizen just keeping up with your studies.

But there are some joys you can expect from going after an advanced degree.  College life and being on a college campus each day is by itself a very stimulating environment.  And you may find yourself at a few pep rallies and enjoying campus life just like the other students.  Being with young people each day can be energizing and you may find yourself looking and acting as much like the youth you “hang out with” as you do your fellow senior citizens.

But the greatest benefit of getting that advanced degree is the pride or accomplishment you will get.  If you are finishing your high school or bachelor’s degree, it no doubt nagged you all your life that this was something that you started and didn’t finish.  So by going back and finishing it, you close that door and take away the power of that nagging voice. 

Don’t be surprised if you fall in love with academic life.  Learning is tremendously addictive and you may wish to go on for yet more studies in fields of learning that have always fascinated you.  Nobody will turn away your tuition dollars if you just want to be in college for the pure joy of learning.  And you will be an inspiration to your fellow students when they see you succeed and they tell themselves, “If Grandpa over there can do it, so can I.”

Gardening is a terrific hobby.  If you have enjoyed gardening for most of your life, you know the joys it can bring to your life.  It gives you the chance to work outside and to feel closer to nature by helping her make food, herbs or beautiful flowers where there was nothing but weeds before.

For many people the joy of gardening is far more important than any cost savings they might get from growing their own food.  In many cases, if you did the numbers on it, the food you grow at home is not that much less expensive than buying it at the local grocery supermarket.  But to have a garden full of producing plants gave you fresh food.  And there was something so gratifying about both growing your own food and in harvesting it as well.

This may have made you nostalgic for gardening if you, like many senior citizens, can no longer garden the way you used to.  Even if you are still living in your own home, the physical labor of tilling the soil for planting and then tending the garden may be more than you can do at this stage of life.  While you dearly yearn to get out there and get your hands dirty in the good earth while planting your favorite flowers or crop producing plants, you must be mindful of your doctor’s instructions and take it easy at this stage of life.

For others in the later years, the time may have come for you to move out of that house you owned that had a yard where you could carve out a bit of land for a garden.  Perhaps you needed to cut back on the amount of maintenance you were able to keep up with.  So you let your kids work with you to sell the old place and get a condo or apartment that is much more manageable. 

Sometimes economy or health concerns play a factor in where you are living and the best place for you right now is an assisted care facility where you can have quality medical care available should you need it.  You know this is a good idea and that your children love you and that is why you worked with them, or at least you tried to when they helped you make the transition.

But giving up gardening may be one of the many transitions to a smaller living space that you grieved about losing and miss easy spring and summer when you want to be out there in nature enjoying the experience of growing things.  If only there was a way that you could continue this delightful hobby and still be careful with the issues that made gardening at a large scale out of the question.

As they say, where there’s a will there’s away.  And there may be new ways you can continue to enjoy the fun of gardening within the constraints of your senior lifestyle.  One way might be to look into getting some window boxes for your apartment.  These long planting boxes are often used by people who want a small indoor flower garden or to nurture house planets.  But you could get a few of these kind of growing spaces, solicit some help from the facility maintenance people or your kids to get them installed and filled with good earth and enjoy puttering in those small gardening space and see the little plants you picked sprout and grow.  With the extra time you have due to retirement, you are sure to do an outstanding job of caring for that little garden.

You can also help your kids learn to garden.  By adopting the “sweet but helpful Grandma” attitude, you may find that your children and their spouses wish they knew your gardening secrets and with a bit of partnering, you could use their muscle and flexibility to set up a nice big garden at their house.  Then you can just come over from time to time to tend it as much as you can and “supervise.”

Be sure you are there ready to go when its harvest day and everyone in the family can enjoy the fresh produce and herbs you grew in that garden.  And you will get a sense of renewal that you found a new way to garden that lets you keep a treasured pastime and do so within the constraints that retired life brings.