Everyone should be educated. Ideally, our system gives everyone the opportunity to be educated. No matter what color, religion, sexual preference, young or old, you have the opportunity to be educated in the United States.

The greater the education, the more knowledgeable of the world we are. While some of us who go to college only stay for four years, there are a good amount of students who continue on to graduate schools as well. While we may not care about what we learn as much as we will the job opportunities that come to us with a greater education, nonetheless we learn more.

Although I highly support education, I find that older students in my classes tend to be more annoying then helpful to the learning environment. Maybe it’s because they’re so many years removed from high school, but some of them ask some of the most obvious questions that most students just assume or may even happen to know the answer to.

I was sitting in my 8 a.m. math class last semester, struggling to stay awake and keep focus. I had the taste of Pepsi on my breath and I could feel my stomach quietly grumbling in disappointment at my lack of a nutritious meal. Taking notes, listening to the teacher, all of that stuff was going on. Then an older lady who appeared to be in her late 40s, early 50s raised her hand apprehensively, waiting for the professor to call on her. The professor stopped talking for a second impatiently giving the older student a queer look, and spoke sensitively asking her what her question was. She said the dreaded phrase, “I don’t understand. Can you do another problem?”

Everyone in the class gently groaned and moaned in anger. I too was angered, I had understood the basic geometry which the professor was lecturing on and had wanted not to reminisce with another problem which was time consuming and boring. Nonetheless I managed to stay focused while a good deal of class looked like they were watching a man read a phonebook out loud.

It’s times like those where I really loathe older students. I question why they’re attending school at such a greater age than the majority of students. I start going through a series of questions about the person and why they’re here and what possibly could have caused them to ask such a simple question. Every time I ask myself another question about the person I only anger myself more and more, until I become fuming with detestation towards a person I don’t even know.

That is until I begin to envy that person who asks that question, or the same people who asks those kinds of questions. Maybe another younger student didn’t understand the problem either, but was too lazy or embarrassed to ask the professor to do another problem.

Most of the older students, twenty five and older, I’ve come in contact with are a pleasure to talk to and love the education, opposed to the majority of apathetic younger students who are here to get a degree which will buy them a job with a salary that will allow them to barely survive in this greedy and cruel environment.

These older students, some of them care about their education. Most of the students who are older then forty and attend Florida Atlantic University actually care to learn and understand what they’re paying for. Opposed to sitting in a classroom three hours a week, they have three hours a week where they learn to better their own understanding of the world. That is what I envy, and love to observe – a craving to learn. These older students that ask annoying questions, while some of them might be unfocused or a little slow, some of them actually care, and that’s what makes them exceptional.