Me & School
You’ve probably gathered from previous posts that I and education don’t always get along. But that’s only half right…I love the act of educating and being educated…it’s the administration of that process that drives me bonkers. I decided to count up the number of months in my life that I’ve been in a “formal” education program and the answer surprised me. Counting K-12 (9months/year), my university degrees, my Air Force training, and my post retirement matriculation…I’ve been educated for three hundred months. 300! Months! I’ve been alive for a very numerically symmetrical 888 months. Math. One third of my life. In school. What drove me to this insanity?
It could be because my ADHD is terrible (it is). Could be I get bored very easily (I do). Could be that I just love to learn (I certainly do). Might be that new gadgets often come with learning and I am a gadget geek (oh, so, so true). Perhaps I have trouble with commitment. Well, that used to be true, not so much anymore.
I enjoy the act of learning and having meaningful conversations. Learning is about finding out new things, things that I might not like or agree with or find consistent with my past. And so, I want to learn about them to decide if the new “thing” is entertainment, fact, fiction, or unknown. That’s what keeps me going. I’m starting to feel like I might be falling behind in some of the learning techniques though. For instance, a few years ago a student in a literature class said he was setting up a “Discord Server” for the class discussion. A what?
I’ve probably overdone the education thing. In fact, I’m sure I have. Law school, for instance, was a colossal waste of time and dollars. That was my own fault, I wasn’t a good lawyer, didn’t work hard at it, and didn’t feel comfortable in the profession. The punch line of this rambling post is that in each of my years of educational institutionalism, there is at least one notable story. I was often challenged by the system and often challenged the system. My victories were few but the stories are kind of cool. I’ll tell some of them in the days to come.
The image above is Miller School of Albemarle. It’s a high school. I did not attend there (it’s $60,000/yr) but was driving by and had to have a picture. A gorgeous campus not too far from Charlottesville, VA.