momma always said "you never stop learning"



i graduated from college. from the great institution of UCIrvine. (our mascott is the anteater, and i'm reminded of this daily by my USC and UCLA alumni co-workers. what does this mean? well, 5 years and lots of debt...

yes, but there's more. one can't just show up to good ol' UCI and start their academic studying. 4 years of high school, 3 years of junior high, 5 years of grade school, a year of kindergarden, and some pre-school... pre-school!! i went to a school in order to learn how to go to school!!!!

this totals up 19 years of taking classes. I'm only 25 years old, and as an infant I don't see myself being coherent enough to learn much more than how to cry, relieve myself, and sleep. (really miss that sleeping thing, i practiced that a lot)

so i've been learning a lot. learing, taking classes, honing my skills so that i'll be a benefit to society. thing is, i feel that the stuff i've learned shouldn't have required 19 years. but that's not the real point here....

i've taken a lot of classes, had a lot of teachers, sat/slept through lots of lectures. i've colored the pictures in the lines and memorized my spelling words for the weekly wednesday spell testing (i did horribly of course) .

so recently i found myself with a list of classes i wanted to take: cullinary, welding, adobe photoshop/illustrator, macromedia flash & dreamweaver, bartending, real estate, scuba diving, autocross or a performance driving class, and of course i'd like to get my MBA...

these are things i really want to learn. now come to think of it, if i were to go full time as a student, i could knock these courses out in 1 year(not including the MBA). i've worked 19 years in schools and classes interpreting books and simplifying equations... but that doesn't pay bills, or impress chicks. the two highest prioritys on my list.

maybe i feel cheated a bit that i am now paying hundreds of dollars a month in order to knock out a debt of thousands of dollars and i still don't know the stuff that i would like to know from going to school. if i want some more skills (the ones that i am impressed with) i'm going to have to take some more classes.

when mom said you never stop learning, i thought that there were life lessons i'd encounter and there were people and situations that i was to learn from. i think i misunderstood her... "you never stop going to school" is most likely what she said. i never trust my memory.