by Shania Foy ’25

This semester in my TS-105 class it was a requirement to volunteer involving technology. At first, I thought the experience would just come and go, but in the short time that I spent volunteering it expanded my outlook on concepts such as aging and time, which I really want to share. VSC is an acronym for Virtual Senior Center, a place for volunteers to teach classes to elders on any topic that they desire. The classes are taught over Zoom and they are fifty-five minutes long, but how you choose to structure the class is completely up to you. Being given this information in training, I was quite nervous when preparing for my first class. I had held the idea that it would be awkward and that I would not know how to break this barrier of being at such different points of life between myself and them. I soon came to realize I myself was putting up this invisible barrier because during and after class they were nothing but welcoming and attentive, and had great opinions and outlooks on the topics I covered. They reminded me of how my own peers would act in a Zoom meeting when told to break out into rooms, for example.

  I do not know if it is just myself, but I unconsciously saw elderly people before this experience as people you cannot relate to as you have grown up and lived in two different times. I associated them with “elderly” hobbies, food preferences, and outlooks on life, but teaching and getting to talk to them made me realize it should not be shocking or polarizing that an elderly person has the same hobbies as myself and my peers. Someone who is above sixty can still like to play the electric guitar or like to paint murals all day long. Reaching a certain age does not mean that you have suddenly lost interest in previous hobbies, that your life has to stop, or that you are now bound to your couch watching only television. You are still fundamentally the same person you were when you were twenty or thirty years old, which while writing this out, seems very obvious.

Before my experience at VSC, in a way, I viewed my life plans as ending at sixty years old and spending the rest of my time relaxing. I feared being old and just being there to exist as a shell of my younger self, but I learned growing old is not a bad thing, and speaking with elders at VSC reminded me of that. I encourage anyone that wants to volunteer to sign up at VSC.com.  Not only are the elders funny and filled with so much joy, but you get to talk about things you are passionate about with those who have similar interests and get to listen to many different outlooks to expand your own knowledge on the topic.