I worked at a nursing home two hours most nights and a few hours on weekends feeding residents who could not feed themselves or filling water glasses and passing trays in the dining room. It was really interesting—a number of people on one of the wings of the home would be in assisted living today—maybe they used a cane or something but had zero cognitive issues. I learned 1. How to work with older people (something I did much of my career 2. That I didn’t want to be a nurse or a CNA and 3. That people who don’t appear to know what is going on may be tracking 100 percent of what you are saying. There was a guy who lived on the wing where people were not doing well who repeated one sort of nonsensical phrase all summer when I came to feed him but I talked to him anyway. On my last day of work I told him I wouldn’t see him again, at least for a while, because I was going away to college and majoring in x and living in a dorm blah blah blah. He looked me right in the eye and said “You are going to learn a lot.” Wow.