Thoughts on Jury Duty – Age

My next few posts, including this one will include several things that I ended up thinking about while spending two days on jury duty this week. This entry really has quite little to do with serving on said jury, but I thought of it while I was there....so...ha!

This Monday, I ended up at the courthouse in Goshen with about 50 other people called as prospective jurors. It was interesting to be among a group of people I didn’t know, but who represented (probably) a cross-section of the population (read: voting population, probably stacked toward middle class) of Elkhart County.

I noticed in this gathering of people a feeling that I’ve been noticing with increasing frequency: a confusion about where my age group fits in. I feel this at church, at work, basically when I go anywhere that there are large groups of people of many ages.

I don’t feel like I fit anywhere. Having worked in the “adult” world for almost two years now, I’m definitely used to being in that culture. I’m used to working with people older than me, many, in fact, old enough to be my parents, as equals. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I am much younger than much of the world around me, and I feel it acutely at times: when people are discussing their kids or retirement, or when I’m in a group of people that don’t know me and assume I’m a young student. I tend to be the youngest, or nearly the youngest, in mixed groups. At jury selection, there was one person, who was an IUSB student, who I presumed to be younger than me. Most likely, everyone else was older. Even the people I assumed to be close in age to me, I often found through casual conversation were ten or more years older than me.

So I often feel conspicuously young, especially when some “kindly” older people make a habit of pointing it out. But I don’t fit in with the crowd that strangers assume I’m in, namely college students. I am part of the working world now and the world of college and studying and parties seems pretty far away to me. In fact, about a month ago, at a communal potluck put on by some friends of ours, we realized just how different we had all become. Here we were, sitting around and talking (mostly married couples) and someone noticed and pointed out that all we’d been discussing for the last half hour or so was house buying, mortgages, debt, and taxes. Not quite usual college fare.

So what do I do? I’m not quite sure. I guess right now my focus is getting the life and work experience that will benefit me and working with older and more experienced people to learn as much as I can. (I love working with Mr. Wilson, a retired teacher and principal who teaches one ENL class with me – he’s got loads of experience!) Generally, I find that most people I interact with are smart and kind enough to remember being young and are not condescending to me, which I definitely appreciate. On the one hand, I almost wish I could get older quickly, so I won’t feel this weirdness, but really, that doesn’t seem reasonable. For all I know, there will always be some outside feelings. Maybe when I get older, I’ll feel old around all the young people I see. And it doesn’t seem like a good idea to rush life. I have to live my best where I am. If I keep rushing, all I’m doing is saying that I hope I’m dead sooner!