It has been three weeks since joining the LCS program, and I love every second of it so far. In the first week of the class, I realized that there are many opportunities that we, young students, have in helping our older generations and being able to understand our elders with compassion and reason. What I mean by understanding our elders is that we can have the chance to learn from our elders and utilize the information they provide us with to benefit our own lives or even today’s society as a whole. Week one brought so much excitement and joy to me because I was able to take a different approach to the topic of aging that we young folks neglect or even undermine at times. We see aging as this awful thing and think about the discriminations and lies we associate old age with but, we must look at the bigger picture here. And that is the lives of the elders and how they might influence society as a whole. Taking age and turning it into a beautiful thing will empower our economy and improve the quality of many older individuals. Coming in week two of classes is where my frustration and anger came out when reading week two reading assignments. The number of discriminations and stereotypes society holds against the elderly today shocked me. I have always known it was alive among society, but I never thought of it as a growing issue in multiple communities. In that aspect, I would call myself a naive individual. I felt guilt when I realized I was adding such stereotypes into the growing issue of ageism unconsciously. At that moment, it motivated me to want change for our elders and encourage a much more open mindset throughout my experience in the LCS program. Currently, entering week three, I am impressed to hear from an elder who lives in an affordable and supportive housing complex in San Diego. With gratitude, Bruce Carron attended our zoom lecture for this week and provided my peers and me with a fascinating life story. From the time he became homeless to now, enjoying his time at his current living space with friends. His story was just remarkable because he became vulnerable with a new group of individuals he just met. This takes so much experience and courage to do because I feel that my generation today would not be able to do such a thing. Especially, when we young students pride ourselves on being as private as possible.
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Gema LopezGema Lopez is a Human Development major with a specialization in Healthy Aging. She is from Archives
March 2022
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