There were many surreal aspects of my experience at Yale, including the opportunity to learn from high-profile professors. I took a course on Shakespeare taught by the late Harold Bloom, who has been described as “the most renowned, and arguably the most passionate, literary critic and Shakespeare scholar in America.” When I told him about my life, the 87-year-old professor gently replied, “You were forged in a fire.” I also met the psychology professor Albert Bandura—who at the time was 91 years old and died in 2021—to chat about a book he had recently written. I was surprised at how late in life many professors worked—some well into their eighties and even nineties. This was a notable difference from the aging adults I knew in my adoptive hometown of Red Bluff, Northern California, who typically looked forward to retirement and preferred not to work longer than they had to, unless it was out of financial necessity.
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