You can teach an old or young dog new tricks, if you understand its motivation.

Age is important if we think it is important. Motivation is a much larger factor. I’m not arguing we should teach calculus in first grade, or expect college students to display the same reckless enthusiasm in phy ed class that we see with fifth graders. I mean that we need to avoid using chronological age as a yardstick and emotional age as an excuse.

“I could learn easier when I was younger and in practice.” That may be true: your brain cells may be atrophying, leaping ship to your bloodstream, or creaking at their dendrites. On the other hand, you have many more tactics and experiences that assist your learning. You have enthusiasm. You’re probably paying for your own schooling, if you are a returning-to-the-classroom student. You know that you don’t have a lot more time to go back to school later in life, because you’re already later in life by your standards. [You didn’t notice the white-haired 60 plus person in the row behind you, taking the class on senior discount.]

You have more than a better job riding on the outcome of the class. You’re setting an example for the school age children in your home, sitting down to the books with them, each doing homework. If you look over their report cards, they are likely to be interested in your transcript. You motivate each other.

Nobody’s life is free from emotional incidents. If the elementary student is struggling through best-friend situations and the high school student is surviving Romeo and Juliet relationships, the older student is out of a divorce, trying to keep his own child motivated, caring for aging parents, going to school on a moonlighting schedule. Life for the older student may have more factors; every student deals with stress.

On the other hand, young and old students who succeed tend to not use emotional and stress issues as an excuse. The semester Jan earned an A in the communications class, she also planned her wedding, worked full time for the utility company, ran a very successful community fund raising campaign, and had time for her friends. I doubt she slept. I was honored to be interviewed as a reference when she applied for her first position as a trust fund lawyer. That was shortly after the graduation party celebrating her joint graduate degrees: JD and MBA. Her husband stood next to her, wearing a T shirt with the law school logo. “I thought it would be easier to get a job if I had a law degree and a Master’s in business,” she said, smiling. I still doubted she was sleeping, especially since she edited the law journal her last year there.

What leads some of our students to this semester’s academic success and others to getting an extra hour’s sleep instead of attending class? If we could answer that question with surety, we could point to an infallible success rate in life and in the classroom. Maybe we are not meant to.

As teachers we are part of the equation. Success comes in many ways, in many parts of our lives, and generally in its own time. Motivation – ours and theirs – is an enormous aspect of the whole.