Ages, Stages, and the Life Course

This week's readings focused on adult development and the different adult life stages. I hadn't really thought about it until I started to read the assigned chapters, but understanding adult development is important to understanding how the different life stages can have an impact on how adults learn. In last week's reading, we read about how life experiences can have an affect on adult learning and that really tied in with this week's lesson on how age stages, which cannot be viewed separately from life experiences because that is intertwined with the life stage, affects adult learning.

The approach to this week's class was quite interesting, as we first broke in to groups to analyze different age brackets and developed a list of the major milestones that group faces and how that impacts learning, and then after we discussed our findings, we broke up in to groups again, based on our own age groups and discussed events and experiences that shaped our own generations.

As part of the Generation Y group, we talked about our own perception of ourselves as a group, discussed our perceptions of other generation groups, and then heard others perceptions of ours and other generations. While working on this task and listing things that shaped our generation, we came up with a large list of elements to describe ourselves, but a small number of descriptions of other age groups, and one of the keywords about ourselves came to fruition, that our generation tends to be self-absorbed.

We also felt that our generation grew up with the promise of "try hard and you will succeed" but in reality, our age group came to join the workforce during a time of economic recession and we were faced with challenges finding employment in our next chapter in life. I think all of this plays a part in why such a large portion of the class is part of Generation Y. We continue to strive for better employment opportunities and success and that is why we continue to pursue education and learn, while also juggling our work and family commitments. At least, that is a motivator for myself, but as a self-absorbed Generation Y-er, I know I must be right! ;) Kidding aside, I am looking forward to continuing next week with the topic of Motivation and learning more about perhaps what motivates others.