Pieces of the Whole
Today we celebrate my mom’s cat Milton, a sweetheart with a difficult past who found his permanent place of residence a few years ago. Now he’s King of the Castle, reigning with benevolence and charm.
Image Credits–Header: (Cesar Cat) © Belinda Ostrowski; (Paws and Heart) © Bigstockphoto.com
So often I’ve compared a given experience to learning to drive a standard. You know, with the clutch.
Today’s new drivers aren’t as likely to learn to drive this way, since most new cars today are automatic (and have been for a long time). But once upon a time, at least in my neighborhood, if you were a teenager and wanted a car, you took your official driving lessons in an automatic (the school provided lessons once you passed Safety Ed.) and a family member took on the task of teaching you to drive a 5-speed.
You learned because a standard cost about 25 percent less than an automatic. That’s a lot of money with that price tag. Besides, there’s more power in shifting gears. More control. More attitude.
However, it’s a frustrating process. You know what you’re supposed to do, you swear you’re doing it and still it doesn’t work. That’s not the only swearing, typically. Your first teacher gives up after sharing a few choice words and passes the task on to the next unsuspecting volunteer.
Then one day, you get it. It works. You no longer are stopped at a green light, praying you won’t stall again. There’s the occasional slip-up, sure, but you now know how to drive a standard.
Other learning experiences mimic that process. For me, it was math. Particularly algebra. I struggled and struggled until miraculously, the light broke through. Lucky for me, my high school math teacher watched my process and understood why I went from Ds to As, virtually overnight.
I wasn’t so lucky in college, but that’s another story for another day.
I’ve seen men and women take on knitting, something that is second nature to me, and talk themselves through every labored stitch. “I’ll never get it,” they might moan, but I assure them, it will happen. Just keep breaking in those new pathways in the brain.
Driving, calculating, knitting. It takes time, but the battle is part of the joy. By the way, I impressed the heck out of a KFC worker a few years back when I pulled up in my 5-speed Corolla. “I’ve never seen a woman drive a standard,” he marveled. Ah, the passing of time. The needs, and therefore the skills, change.
So whatever you’re learning, stay with it until that breakthrough. Actually, I’m not going to say never give up. There is always a time to move on. Just don’t give up before the process is complete, and your frustration has matured and born fruit.
Image Credits: (Light Bulbs) © Dmitry Guzhanin – stock.adobe.com; (Frustrated Woman) © ivector — stock.adobe.com; (Woman in Car) courtesy of Pixabay.
I have what some would call one of the most outdated degrees available today: news journalism, formerly called print journalism. We were groomed to work for newspapers.
I’m gue
ssing current journalism majors get a good dousing of social media education as well, but the reality is, by the time today’s graduates with any sort of journalism degree are my age, their degree will also be outdated.
Which leads to this question: why do we go to college if everything we learn, all the knowledge we gain, becomes yesterday’s news in light of greater innovation, broader (or narrower) thinking, changes in what the workplace values?
Because education in and of itself has value.
I went to college twice. The first time I dropped out before graduating, something, quite frankly, I’ve never really regretted. I got what I wanted out of that experience, and if I had graduated, I never would have gone back and completed my education in a field for which I was far better suited.
It wasn’t easy, however, to go back, and when I dropped out, I had to explain my decision to several people in my life who knew that would be the case. Some understood, some did not. One friend was more upset than most, and when I told him I simply couldn’t pursue a degree in something I had no interest in vocationally, he asked me this: “what about education for the sake of education?”
The fact was, it wasn’t a well-rounded learning experience at that college, at least, not for me. I needed something more. But he was right about the inherent value of education.
Today in our country a college education is often maligned, as if learning and thinking turns us into pontificating fools with no idea which way the wind is blowing. People wonder why they should bother to learn something they’re “never going to use.” Yet how do you know what knowledge you will need, and how you will use it?
You learn a lot more than facts in college. You learn how to think.
Without an education, you are more likely to fall prey to con artists who play on people’s emotions and ignorance, spouting rhetoric not substantiated by the facts. They have always existed, and they aren’t likely to go away. It pays to have the tools to sort through the mire and gain understanding.
Today I no longer work in a field remotely related to my degree, yet having an education is an essential part of my success. You can tell the college graduates from the rest. Even those self-taught individuals, those who know lots of facts and can win any game of Trivial Pursuit, don’t have the polish that comes from the college experience. It is education; it is the process of learning, of deeper thinking, of using logic and research to reach your own conclusions that changes you.
Education for education’s sake.
This is a revision of one of my most-read posts, from April 2016.
Photo Credits: (typewriter) © GraphicStock; (Graduation Day) © carballo — Fotolia
What happens to our words when technology changes?
What happens when the media we rely on today is more outdated than eight-track tapes, and no one can access what we’ve written, the pictures we’ve taken, the record of history our present day communication will someday become?
Who are we counting on to save the gems of personal expression we take for granted today?
It’s phenomenal how much data we can store on a tiny piece of finely-crafted metal and wires, surrounded by plastic. Over time, those drives will corrode or be replaced by newer devices, and much of what you store on them is likely to be lost forever. Think of what you saved on disks just ten years ago, and tell me where you can go to retrieve all of it.
We cherish diaries of our ancestors, no matter how mundane they may have believed their lives to be, as a peek into hearts and minds of the people whose history shaped our own lives. How do we leave this same wealth of information for generations to follow?
This information will be a treasure someday.
I love blogging, but I fear what I write here will be lost eventually. The alternative seems to be print out my entire blog, and that isn’t going to happen.
If anyone has an answer, a real answer, not optimistic speculation, I’d love to know about it.
Image Credits © stock.adobe.com
It’s hard — so hard.
When you fear your world is about to turn upside-down, and there’s nothing you can do but pray and wait. When you think perhaps the inevitable is happening now.
When your heart cries out, “I’m not ready for this!” but your head tells you, “you’ll never be ready.”
When the practical mixes with the unimaginable.
It’s hard.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
My World With Words 
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