You can call these seniors freshmen — seriously, they’ll get a kick out of it.
Kingsborough Community College enrolled a new class on Oct. 6 comprised entirely of well-aged Brooklynites, who will hit the books for the first time in decades in order to master the one skill that’s new to all of them — getting older.
“This is a new program for the aging population of Brooklyn which offers the participants the skills and tools necessary to achieve measurable improvements in navigating longer lives,” said Michael Goldstein, communications director at Kingsborough.
The debut course, called “Live Well, Do Well, Age Well,” is billed as the first in the nation to teach “mastery of aging” and attracted more than 400 applications from would-be scholars ages 50 and up.
But with only 34 seats available, the applicants had a better chance of graduating from the Navy Seal’s elite training program — which has a mere 80-percent dropout rate — than getting into the new course at Kingsborough.
“We ended up having to interview everyone, and ultimately chose 34 who were really committed,” said Goldstein.
The venerable undergrads will participate in 10 classes designed for dotage, covering topics such as sleep, nutrition, finances, relationships, and exercise.
The program will add to the already considerable offerings that Kingsborough has for senior scholars, including the My Turn program, which offers courses to students over the age of 59 for a modest $80 registration fee.
“Seniors come here to take all sorts of courses — physics, computers, physical education — and they’re in there with the younger-age students and they add a lot to the class,” said Goldstein. “They have a whole different perspective, and they get along with the students, who really look up to them.”
