Getting set to tute at uni

I’m going back to school.

The University of Queensland here just notified me that I have been accepted as a post-graduate student (in the US, we’d just say “graduate student”) and in three or four years if all goes well, I may have a doctorate in health promotion.

Some of you will know that my wife, Kristi, already holds such a degree and is employed as a researcher in Human Movement Studies at UQ.  After some months of assisting her and a colleague with one of their studies, I decided I might as well get involved “for real.”

So Kristi and I raised the possibility with her boss, who was generous with her encouragement.  Now the university has given its official approval, and I’m moving away from a life of self-directed activities such as blogging, reading the news on-line, and playing chess.

I’m moving instead toward schedules, study, meetings, library work, and research on how older people can be encouraged to exercise more for the sake of physical and mental health.

After working as a journalist, being a Unitarian Universalist minister, and serving as a denominational bureaucrat, I’m grabbing onto the lowest rung of another career ladder.

Come Tuesday, I’ll begin leading three weekly “tutes” for “uni” students.  (That’s Aussie-speak for “three weekly tutor groups for university students.”)  In each tute: 19 students who are 19, give or take a year.

They’ll be starting university, as will my oldest grandson in September in the US, while I’ll be putting the “mature” into the term “mature student.”

The idea of retirement has never appealed to me and I’ve been saying since I left gainful employment in 2005 that I’m “between careers.” Turns out that was accurate and now I’m starting training for the next phase of work life.

I won’t be setting any records, though.  UQ recently gave an earned doctorate to someone a decade or more older than I expect to be if and when I get mine.

As I’ve moved more and more toward this new way of spending time, I’ve begun to blog less. That trend will likely continue.  There are more people in the world now who write blogs, anyway, than people who read blogs.

Obviously, you’re reading this.  Thank you.

But, don’t go away completely. Who knows what stories I’ll have to tell after I spend a few hours in the classroom with 57 teenagers?