Have you heard the one about the 56-year-old who went to grad school in London?

Most days, I don't feel like a joke. I worked nine years to get here, to my M.A. course in eighteenth-century studies at King's College London. Yet, more often than not, I am reminded that I am an oddball, a blip, a one-off on the sphere of age-appropriate academics plying their talents in these corridors.

Take, for example, this bar I'm sitting in. I am taking these nachos home, in no small part because there is no one my age here to socialize with. Ironically, we were told today in class that the eighteenth century was a remarkably social one. And yet, I have been forced to be less social than I was back in my home country. Try hanging out with people young enough to be your children and you look like Woody Allen in any of his movies after 1980.

Today, although I look nothing like my convenor on the programme, the museum docent told my group that she'd found our teacher and pointed to me. I am 5'9 and have brown hair. My teacher is about 5'4 with grey hair. Our only common feature is being born within a ten year span of each other.

I was also singled out by a classmate's mother. "Oh, your photo's on the wall! I saw it!" Her daughter said, "No, Mom, Laurie's a student." Then there are the more practical concerns, such as not being able to see what's flashing on a screen far away from me because I've forgotten my distance glasses. Or having to consider seriously whether I'm up for a long climb up some steps to view the Painted Hall's sublime ceiling in Greenwich (I did, and I was). Or tumbling into the Health Centre more often than my classmates because I have - you name it - a need for an orthopaedic doc, gastro doc, pulmonologist, urologist, gynecologist, the list goes on. I decided it would be easier to just put out the fires flaming the strongest. I don't have time to run to the doctor at all, much less more than twice a month.

Many times I will have forgotten my age, then am reminded when I am not invited out for drinks or lunches or parties. I'm on a popular app with my classmates, and realize I'm not the most popular in our group. They are all such sweet people, but I hardly expect to have slumber parties with people who weren't even born when I earned my B.A.

It takes a strong constitution and fervent belief in oneself and one's mission to be age-inappropriate in this world. While fellow Class of '79ers are (god help me) sharing photos of grandkids on Facebook, divorcing, getting hip replacements, and choosing second careers while I am still reinventing my first, I am here in London realizing my full potential. Today the convenor asked what I would want to do with my PhD. As she is probably in my age range, I would not accuse her of being ageist, but it did reinforce that questions of career may be more serious for the likes of me than they would be for Buffie and Mollie and Kimmie. I wasn't born under a rock and nor do I intend to go hide under one after I graduate. If I choose to pursue a PhD, which at this point remains a wild card, I will do it with the same degree of purpose I've applied to my MA.

Will I experience prejudice in the job market? You bet. Will it concern me? You bet. Will it deter me? Hardly. I recently met a sweet woman in the toilets in the Strand building at King's. She happened to be blind. She also talked to me like I was just another student, and we had such a great conversation. It made me think: she's not looking at me like I'm old enough to be her mother and I'm speaking to her as if she has sight. Why do we, as a society (myself included) limit our friendships and connections? Just as the President of France has stood up for his age-inappropriate wife, who is a couple decades his senior, I stand up for my right to do, be, learn at any age I fancy. I am learning more every day and retaining more than I ever could have dreamt at age 25. And I am very grateful to this university and even the kids I'm matriculating with for, on most days, making me feel like one of the gang.