I have been trying out different classes since my husband’s death three years ago, with mixed success in both of the programs I’ve tried, partly because the culture of senior-citizen class-taking is not always easy to break into. I had my last classes of the term in my senior citizen program this week; French was Tuesday, and art was Thursday.

People my age seem to take classes only partly to learn something; really, they want to practice something in the company of others, with a regular schedule and predictable routines. They want to feel they belong somewhere, and they want a teacher there to tell them what to do.

The downside of that kind of shared community is that being the new kid is not easy, especially if (like me) you already sort of know what you’re doing. Often, the returning students resent my prior knowledge.

This is a chronic problem of mine. I took a poetry class because I like poetry, for instance. The problem with that class was that I taught poetry in my English class, for twelve years. I kept having informed opinions. It was not popular. I took a memoir class because I wanted to tell my life story, and the problem there was that I am a published writer. I took etching; I have made etchings, I took a bunch of drawing classes, even though I went to art school. I took a class in an iOs art app. I have been using the app on my own for some years.

What? Those are things I’m interested in doing. I’m not going to take a class in something I don’t want to know about. And I’m there to practice and try new things. People don’t understand that. They think that either you’re competent or you’re not.

Also, I they think I’m showing off, because I’m not going to pretend I don’t know anything. That way lies madness. I don’t know very much, not really; the problem is, my ignorance is based in many years of grappling with the subject.

One of the reasons I like my terrible Intermediate French class so much is that though the regulars made fun of what they considered my excessive prior competence in the language, after the first couple of classes they made fun of me in a more friendly way. That was partly because early on, when I was getting all the answers right, the teacher would just say “correct,” but then the teacher figured out how to yell at me, and I started to fit in.

In the last French class, as usual, my buddy Carol who sits next to me was struggling. She really doesn’t belong in Intermediate French but there wasn’t an alternative course, so she asks me for help, I give it to her, and then the teacher yelled at us for talking. “I can’t think when there’s noise!” he snapped. “Do you want to teach the class?” We stared at him like frogs from a pond at night, and he moved on because despite his irritability he is a sweet old guy, and we all forgive him for being an idiot. Carol is very cool; she was an English teacher and a social worker, and like me she is new to the class.

We all celebrated the last French class with a potluck. The food was good.

The art class isn’t as friendly, except for the teacher, who is an absolute duck. Let me put it this way: We have to post our work in a shared Google folder, and from time to time she will say, “You should take a look at what Delia put in the shared drive,” and then the people in the class will look at me like frogs from a pond at night and go back to their work because, you see, I am still an interloper. Also, the point of the class is to meet and sketch in various places in Philadelphia that I have already spent a lot of time in. Further, I went to art school fifty years ago. So in art class, as in the French class, I am (a) the new girl and (b) too fucking experienced.

We met in a church to sketch for the last art class. The church was new to everyone except me and the teacher. It’s a church I used to belong to, along with my husband and child, and it’s high Episcopalian and glorious. My mother was an Episcopal priest.

For a change, though, two of the people in the class actually talked to me about my picture in the shared drive this last art class, and we negotiated with the teacher to take another Procreate class at the Apple Store, because I’ve been working on my iPad in Procreate and I showed them how easy it is to use a photograph as the base layer.

I could teach an art class myself, but I won’t, even though I did write up a curriculum for a course earlier in the year, because I don’t want to teach. I want to practice something in the company of others, and feel as if I belong there.

That’s kind of a shame, because I would do a great job of building shared community if I was the teacher.

Anyway, I’m taking both courses again in the spring, and that way I won’t be the new student any more. I’ll see how that goes.