Ch. 15: Aging: “Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?”

Ch. 15: Aging: “Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?”

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Description

This chapter appears in the book, How to Build a Life in the Humanities: Meditations on the Academic Work-Life Balance. Edited by Greg Colon Semenza and Garrett A. Sullivan.  

Chapter abstract:  The two epigraphs above represent significantly disparate musings on the benefits or pitfalls of the experience of aging. From as early in my post-secondary education as I can remember, I have tended to gravitate toward the former, less sympathetic mindset about getting old. While I was still a teenaged undergraduate, I was keenly aware that I would invariably feel the effects of time in a painful way, and I routinely entertained fears that I would, someday, cease to be. I wasn’t sure about why I had these anxieties, or whether others shared similar fears, but I was aware of the shaping influence they had on my life. I suffered my first full-blown “midlife” crisis at 25, and spent a considerable amount of time negotiating the ways in which art, literature, music, film, and other humanistic endeavors engaged ideas of both growing up and growing old.

ISBN

978-1-137-51152-2

Publication Date

2015

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan, part of Springer Nature

City

New York

Keywords

Higher education, Work-life balance, Aging, Humanities

Disciplines

Higher Education | Higher Education and Teaching

Ch. 15: Aging: “Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?”

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