SCOSA Program Connects Older Adults With College Students

College students might think they have nothing in common with their elders, and that tends to be true if they’re comparing their day-to-day experiences in 2013.

Students at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey are finding out that while their elders can’t relate to their experiences today, the youths of the two generations share many similarities.

“Students are apprehensive when we tell them older people are coming in to talk to them at first,” Stockton Center on Successful Aging (SCOSA) Program Assistant Gina Maguire said. “But after they leave, the students will say, ‘They talk about the same things we do. They have the same experiences we do.’ They’re really happy and they want them to come back.”

Older students visit the Stockton students enrolled in the college’s gerontology courses to discuss certain themes. Soon, everyone will have the opportunity to learn about the older generation, as a group of 20 older adults, between the ages of 60 and 81, from Atlantic and Cape May counties wrap up a collective memoir about their experiences.

The book will be available as a teaching tool for gerontology students, and Maguire is hoping it will be available at the SCOSA’s festival on May 23. The group, which has been working on the book since January of 2012, is scheduled to complete the last of 14 themes on April 3.

Maguire and Anita Beckwith established the Time to Tell program based on Dr. Lisa Cox’s guided autobiography segment of her Aging and Spirituality course. Cox, the project leader for “Time to Tell” and the SCOSA research chair, assigns students nine life themes to write about during guided autobiography exercises.

For at least one member of the group, writing about her life is nothing new.

Roberta Plasket, of Hammonton, has already written a 239-page memoir titled, “Awakened Fire: First Lessons in the Dance of Life,” currently available on Amazon.com.

Plasket is one person who, if students can’t relate to the stories she tells, they at least find them interesting.

“On Easter, I’m going to get shot out of a slingshot with my nephew,” said Plasket, who will celebrate her 76^th birthday on April 4.

In the past, she’s opted to go parasailing instead of skydiving; was the first female at an all-male insurance company; taught disadvantaged children; and spent a lot of time with older people as a teenager.

“I had two older neighbors and I would go to their houses to spend time with them. I would clean their up around their house just so I could spend more time with them,” Plasket said.

As a result of spending copious amounts of time with older adults, Plasket encountered her first experience with death at the age of 16. She and a friend were watching a group of older adults. One of them fell asleep and didn’t wake up.

“My friend put the other 10 people to sleep, and I held on to this man’s hand,” Plasket said. “I put pennies over his eyes and my friend asked me why. I said because I heard a saying about someone who was so bad, they would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.”

She was young at the time, and while many young people have never been in that situation, many would find that to be a captivating story.

“I had so much fun writing this book,” Plasket said.

She wrote her own book, but she isn’t the only one in the group with an interesting story to tell.

Dick Perine, a Stockton graduate from Barnegat, writes about his wife, Ethel. Ethel has Alzheimer’s Disease, and Dick Perine hopes the mental exercise will help trigger memories in her mind.

“They’re telling the stories they want their kids to know,” Maguire said.

And the students can’t get enough.

“One of the things the students tell me they want me to do is bring the older adults in more,” Maguire said.

The 14 themes covered in the memoir include:

• Family
• Education
• Home Life
• The Role of Money
• Entertainment, Travel, Leisure and Hobbies
• Life’s Roles or Career
• Health, Body and Habits
• Death’
• Sexual Identity
• Spirituality or Philosophy
• Politics and History
• Food
• Celebrations
• Difficult or Revealing Questions