Learning, as a child, involves assembling vocabulary and a body of information sufficient to build a structure of understanding. Learning as a teen requires a conscious, often arduous effort to strengthen this structure in order to weave a more solid tapestry of understanding.

Learning as an adult, however, is a different matter. This kind of learning can easily explode into a delicious frolic within that tapestry, turning its stiff, stitched folds into rolling, velvety cascades.

At least that’s how it seems to me as I anticipate (with sadness) tonight’s final session of a tutorial on Russian Literature that I have directed for Memoria College’s masters program in Classical Education. Together with a group of enthusiastic adults we have immersed ourselves for weeks into Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin and will close tonight with a leap to Ivan Turgenev’s inimitable novel Fathers and Sons as a point of balance.

I am embarrassed to say how fun this course has been. And not just for me. Ostensibly, the participants are solidifying their credentials in Classical studies. But what really has happened is this: they’ve fallen in love with Pushkin. And when people fall in love, fireworks do go off. Furthermore, when we meet tonight to consider the contrasts between Onegin and Fathers and Sons, I expect an unabashed celebration to break out as they discuss this marvelous work.

Keep in mind that the writers Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are presented to most people (including me, long ago) as “the” Russian masters. And, of course, “master” is as an apt description for each. But far earlier, Pushkin (1799-1837) gave the world what the Russian philosopher Nikolai Dobroliubov called “the Living Russian Language.” That living language Pushkin fashioned with his irreverent wit and his encyclopedic mind, both shaped by a mind-boggling fluency with the Classical world. Pushkin created or perfected in the Russian language every genre of literature possible at the time, leaving a legacy unparalleled (move over Shakespeare) elsewhere in the world—one that even today shapes Russian culture.

During this course, I’ve had the added joy of pulling out my Pushkin toys: translations of Onegin and commentaries; lithographs and art books bought for kopeks in Soviet metros back when I was a student in Leningrad; as well as treasured tchotchkis (Yiddish for trinkets) from my overflowing shelves of Russian paraphernalia.

The students could not offer 3-D puzzles of Pushkin’s profile; rather, they’ve brought bushels of enthusiasm and baskets of intellectual skill to shape our adventure together. This is what one cherishes about adult learners: the depth of their knowledge and wisdom. Some have been raising families and tutoring their children. Others work as teachers of Latin, mathematics, and literature. Still others honed their skills as professionals in various fields. Each is on fire with learning.

In a time when it’s increasingly hard to see our country’s treasures amidst smoke and ash, we might pause to appreciate the fact that here, in the US, we can do something unimaginable in most parts of the world: we can decide to study again as an adult. Whether formally or informally, an adult in this land can reengage with education to change directions or to fulfill a dream. I like to joke with my tour-guide colleagues abroad that I could, at my stage of life, decide to go to medical school, as wild as that sounds. If I accumulated the required science and math courses, there’s a medical school somewhere that would let me in.

And who has more joy in learning than an older student? Even a few years spent away from “school” makes a difference. Back in the late 80s, a fellow with a special smile showed up in my music history class. After an initial lackluster performance in college, Mark (I don’t think he will mind) enlisted in the Air Force as a bandsman—a clarinetist, actually. Distinguishing himself in his early military service, he was granted leave to go back and finish his degree in music—an accomplishment both desired by him and necessary if he were to continue his upward-bound path in the Air Force. And so he sat in the air-cooled comfort of our music building, enjoying each minute of a “task” not centered on military drills, but on learning about the history of music. Ah, there was the life!

Mark went on to have an illustrious career in the Air Force, one that took him to many countries, with an extensive period in Germany, and afforded him countless opportunities to perform at a high level, arrange music for his beloved Air Force woodwind quintet, and teach. Today he’s back in school earning an advanced degree in Library Science. He will never be done learning as an adult.

But back to Pushkin. When our seminar is over, I will be sad. I’ll re-shelve my books, set my toys back in place, and look towards my Memoria College spring course—a tutorial that begins with Goethe’s Faust and then places it in juxtaposition with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Doesn’t that sound like a party? And of course I’ll begin by offering a spicy, freeze-dried nugget of “it all starts with Pushkin!” to swallow before we open the first page of either Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.

But those are details. My essay today seeks to encourage you to take up the great adventure of learning—no matter your age. If you’re not sure what to do, look around. Ask others. Perhaps your adventure will take the form of a gingerly launched individual effort to tackle Dante or Cervantes. Maybe you’ll enroll in a class for glass-blowing or revisit the calculus course that undid you in high school.

Or perhaps your adventure will take the form of a course through marvelous organizations like Memoria College, Classical Academic Press, or the CIRCE Institute. It could even be that you’ll choose to sit, literally, at the feet of learning by establishing regular sessions with a senior relative or neighbor whose talents and knowledge, accumulated across a lifetime, seem no longer needed by the world.

If you have babies on one hip, toddlers on the other, and teens at the kitchen table, you may need to wait a few more years before you can open the doors to this adventure. Don’t forget, though, that everything you now do is part of your intellectual and spiritual preparation (even if do not believe it!). And when those doors do open, the level of insight and ingenuity you will bring to your adult studies is going to bring the kind of smile to your teacher that I presently have on my face, contemplating what will happen tonight with my group of seekers.