Getting My Education

This week’s spin cycle is about education. And while I have no children in school I know several teachers and people that are attending college for higher education. And the thing about education I find the most interesting is how different everyone is about their ideas of education. I went from school from 1989 until 2006. That was 17 years of my life being educated. I finished college in 4 years and while I definitely did not attend all my classes I graduated on time and with a pretty good GPA. I felt that I needed to finish school as quickly as possible for my sanity and for my budget. I am indebted to Sallie Mae a cool 25k so I can only imagine the kids that took their sweet time. Or maybe those were the kids that had their parents paying so they didn’t mind! Hmmmm…maybe that was their way of staying out of the real world for a bit longer. But that’s neither here nor there. So that was how I felt about college. My hubby went back to college because I was a good influence on him and told him he needed a degree. So he went back and finished. He ended up with a criminal justice degree and while he does not use that degree at all in any way, shape or form he has a degree. Woo hoo! He’s a college educated man! I got me a good one! But he took his classes pretty seriously. And his sister and her husband are both back in school and they take their classes extra seriously. And I don’t know if it is just because they didn’t finish before and now they want to make sure they finish with perfection or what but we never see them. They are busy during the week and then on the weekends they are bogged down with homework. And while this annoys me because I went to school full time *18 hours* and worked 2 jobs I always was doing stuff on the weekends, I understand that they want to get the most out of their education while I was only there to please my parents! (sorry mom!) Not that I don’t think college is/was important, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do and so I just closed my eyes and blindly picked a major. Ok, well maybe not quite, but the advisors were terrible and I just took the classes that I thought I would enjoy. And while I did enjoy the classes our area of the state is not extremely conducive to the types of jobs that my major creates (that don’t need years of experience—that comes from unpaid internships that I couldn’t afford) so that kind of left me out of the loop. And now the job I am at is looking to be my career which is fine, but a college degree is not a requirement so I could be in debt quite a bit less. Hindsight’s 20/20.

But on to school that I liked! I really enjoyed elementary school and my favorite teacher was my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Lyons. She was a little old lady and she was so nice. My favorite parts about her class was there was a table that was filled with sand and then in all the sand there were “dinosaur bones” that we had to dig for. It was so awesome! Then in 1st or 2nd grade my teacher had a bathtub filled with pillows and that was where we got to sit and read if we were good. My friend who teaches kindergarten told me now that she had wanted to do that but pillows carry lice so if a kid gets lice then she would have to clean all the lice-covered pillows. So thanks Lindsay..for ruining my perfect image! And I can’t wait to send Leo to school. He already loves going to daycare to see his friends every day and he seems to be interested in the learning parts of his day (his favorite is math and science, well other than going outside for recess) so I think that he would enjoy the structure of an actual school. And I am really excited about being the mom of a school kid. At his current daycare they don’t really have class parties that parent’s come to and they don’t go on field trips. And those are the parts I’m really excited to be a part of. I want to be the mom that goes on the field trip to the zoo and to the children’s museum. I kind of feel like I already do that but it would be even more fun when it’s part of Leo’s school and I can meet his little friends. Oh lord. Just writing that I realized I’m going to be the creepy mom that Leo’s going to have to tell me to stop being a creeper. But I don’t care! Haha!

And so how I got so far off-thought that this came out to be such a random post I don’t know and bless you those who finished it! BUT it is about education and that was the original topic so I stayed on point a little bit! So happy Friday and I hope I didn’t dumb you down by having you read this! And check out the spin cycle to see other posts that I am sure are much better articulated about education!