Learning Beyond School

My beliefs about education inspired me to pursue a career as a librarian and as a writer. I believe education should be available for all and education can happen at any time at any age and by methods both traditional and unconventional.

As it’s the start of a new school year, I’ve been considering education and the learning process and what it means to me. My family has emphasized the importance of education for as long as we have memories. One of my ancestors, who’d only had about six weeks of formal education (and learned everything else from his mother) made sure to instill an importance of education in his descendants that thrives to this day.

How do we learn? Do we ever stop learning? My hope is no. We don’t stop. I believe in gaining a formal education. My children attend public school. I graduated from high school and went onto gain a bachelor’s degree followed by a master’s degree. We are so blessed to have access to these resources. Formal schooling can provide a curriculum and a structure, as well as an environment of learning together with teachers to help students along the way. You show up, do the work, and you’ll learn some things. That doesn’t mean formal schooling is without fault or is the end all be all educational resources.

 There are so many resources beyond school to learn, grow, and advance our own education.  On and on, the availability of both professional and personal development should not hinder the ability to do it. Education and growth should be a lifelong commitment. No, don’t groan. It’s not the same when you don’t have tests or homework to turn it. It’s an adventure of your own choosing. Trying new things, watching and learning. Our development is never done. And this is amazing! Our brains aren’t frozen bubbles that get stuck one way and will burst if anything disrupts them. We have the capacity to change, to grow, to learn and engage in new activities, new dreams at any age. This is encouraging, not depressing.

So how do we learn beyond school? Homeschoolers tap into this a bit more in the early years, but anyone can slip into that spirit of learning by taking advantage of free courses, books, webinars, podcasts, videos, museums, libraries, and free universities offerings. Countless resources are available. My favorite method is through books. This doesn’t have to cost any money if you have access to a library. I’ve discovered new parenting philosophies, cooking techniques, health regimes, writing skills, habit creation, meditation tools, mindful lifestyles and more through books. I enjoy podcasts and free webinars. YouTube is one of the greatest educators of our generation. You can learn anything from how to change a tire to the intricacies of the human immune system with the sacrifice of sitting through a few adds. Additionally, universities often offer some free courses or content as well. There are of course paid programs like Skillshare and masterclass that provide access to classes on a variety of skills. I’ve never taken a course through these programs, but I’ve considered it and may do so in the future.

Now that we’ve established the plethora of educational resources available, it’s important to remember it’s okay to not be a master immediately. Proficiency requires time and practice. I’ve read many, many, many books on parenting. Does that make me a perfect parent? No. Does that mean I screw up, employing the same old ineffective tactics when I know there’s a better way? Absolutely. But I am getting better. Slowly. I’m learning to fail without shame or self-blame. I’m learning growth takes time and we all deserve grace. I’m learning our effort has intrinsic value—the ‘doing’ is more important than the outcome. If I worried too much about being perfect, I wouldn’t keep trying. I would give up, and that is the biggest failure of all.

I’m learning to accept that these blog posts aren’t perfect, and they still have value. If I never post them, reworking them to death in the name of perfection, or procrastinating in the name of fear, it limits their potential for good. Something special ignites our hearts when we share our passions, our talents, our experiences, whether successes or failures. Light and hope blossom into a garden of unrestricted wisdom when we tell our stories with the intent to lift others instead of aggrandize ourselves.

Beauty and goodness thrive out there in the world if we open ourselves up to it. We can be generous with ourselves and with others as we all learn and grow.  It’s hard to admit our short comings, to acknowledge our ignorance or incompetence, especially with something we ‘should be able to do’. Nobody likes to feel stupid. We crave connection and fear ridicule or rejection. We worry we will look silly if we do something wrong.

 I’m afraid to speak in Spanish because my capacity with the language is inadequate. In refusing to try, I may be missing an opportunity to connect to someone albeit with my extremely limited skills. I can find grace for others when they speak my native English imperfectly. Why not myself? I love when people sing off key. Doing something badly is brave. Trying something new is brave. We can all be brave.

Learning can be hard, but it’s worth it. Whether in school or out, whether you’re eight, eighteen or eighty, I hope you never stop learning. Don’t let excuses get in the way of trying something you’ve always wanted to do. Enjoy looking silly. Be ridiculously bad! Let yourself fail. And then try again. In the immortal words of Aaliyah, “Pick yourself up and try again, try again.”

What do you want to be when you grow up?

We ask kids what they want to be when they grow up? We ask successful adults when they knew they wanted to be … whatever job or position they currently succeed in. Did you always want to be a nurse? Why did you want to become a doctor? When did you know you wanted to be an astrophysicist?

It would be awesome if we could separate who we are from what we do for a living. What if when we asked kids what they wanted to be they answered: I want to be kind, courageous, and creative? Wouldn’t that be magical? But that’s a discussion for another time.

If someone asked me when I knew I wanted to be a writer, I’m not sure what my answer would be.

 In Kindergarten, I clearly remember not wanting to be a doctor. It’s a coincidence that my father happens to be one. In fifth grade, I wanted to be a singer/model. A few friends and I sang the national anthem at a hockey game on a red carpet that year. I was clearly destined for stardom.

In seventh grade we had to write a story. I wrote a brilliant Sailor Moon spin off, but I’ve since lost any record of, so I can’t be sure. At this point in my life, I was reading, we’ll call it, a lot. Those books and stories revolved in my head. I added characters and story lines as I bounced in gentle circles around our trampoline. In the warm desert evening, I listened to cicadas create their buzzing music and played stories through my head, bouncing round and round. The offshoots were endless, the ideas propagating constantly.

In high school, I began to consider my path for the future I wanted, but my vision was hazy. I liked teaching but didn’t want to spend all my time grading. I was drawn toward English, but I didn’t think I could stomach reading a mountain of crappy essays. I didn’t know what I wanted so I didn’t know how to get there.

In college, I majored in English because I liked it. I had a small notion that I wanted to be a writer. I took a creative writing class. I got a B, so that meant I was terrible. Naturally, I gave up. I was rubbish at it so why try? My fixed mindset did not allow for failure. My fear of deficiency kept me from getting better. I am still working on shifting that attitude. I recognize that making mistakes is not the end of the world and they help me ultimately grow, but I still don’t like it. It’s probably not meant to be something we like.

Some piece of me still wanted to write since I took another creative writing class my last semester of college. I had another mediocre experience. And I stopped again. I believed if I wasn’t immediately good at something, I never would be. It was not worth trying. I think Yoda did me a disservice here. Trying and failing and trying again is how we ‘do’.

So, I couldn’t be a writer and didn’t want to be a teacher—what then?

 I graduated college, got married to my high school sweet heart (yes, very cute, I know), and moved across the country all within about six months. After college, I needed a job. This was 2008-2009 and jobs were difficult to come by. I assumed I could substitute teach, but the state we were living in didn’t allow you to substitute with just a BA, which was what I could have done in my home state.

We moved again and I ended up working as an after-school teacher. I enjoyed this quite a bit since it involved teaching without—you know—the grading. At this point, I was trying to decide if I wanted to get a master’s degree and in what subject. I considered English, but it didn’t feel right.

I can’t remember when or what spurred the thought to get a Master’s degree in Library Science. I took a medieval manuscript class in French that I absolutely loved. I thought it would be pretty cool to work with old books. If I couldn’t be a writer, I’d be a librarian. I got my degree in just over a year and had my first baby two weeks after graduating.

I love being a librarian. I share stories and teach—but in an individualized and nuanced way.  Something special lights up people’s eyes when then find that book or article that is perfect for their research project. I love being a part of that process. Matching a reader to a book and is a high I never come down from. I still love it and will happily recommend books to anyone that asks (and even if they don’t).

Like I mentioned before, stories run amok through my mind all the time. I build them in my head but never wrote any down. Writing is a lot of work and like we discussed earlier, I was not good at it. I never felt truly compelled to put them to paper. Some piece of me did want to write, but I didn’t believe I could.

When I finally put fingers to keyboard and snapped a story onto the screen, a conglomeration of events propelled that innate yearning to plow through the fear blocking me. The events were as follows. The story taking shape in my mind was totally my own and circulated over and over, building into a compelling epic. My husband worked long hours. I had quite a bit of time during the day (you know besides the time I was raising two kids) before I worked as an evening shift Librarian. I was listening to Amy Poehler’s book Yes, please! She complains about how hard it is to write a book, but she says it is “the doing of the thing” that matters. I was also reading (I read multiple books at a time) a crappy book at the same time. I remember having the thought “I could do this.”

And then my sister showed me the viral clip of Shia LaBeouf forcefully yelling at the camera to “Do it! Just do it!” As ridiculous as it might be, it pushed me over the edge. I thought: I’m going to do this.

I had to write. The story in my head needed to be told. Shia Labouef yelled at me to just do it. Amy Poehler told me I could do it. A book I can’t even remember the title of showed me I could do it.

When did I decide I wanted to become a writer? I always loved stories. Maybe everyone does. Hearing my parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles tell stories about my younger self, my siblings, and my parents when they were young. My grandparents told stories of distant ancestors handed down along with a random welsh word and the odd turn-of-phrase. I’m not sure when I knew I wanted to be a writer, but that was the moment I decided I could maybe…try.

As for why I wanted to be a writer? For as long as I’ve had memories, stories meandered in my head, growing and rooting around so much they were running out of room. They started settling in my gut and into my bones. They flowed into my bloodstream and filtered through the air I breathed. I had to give them voice or I’d bury myself in them. I hope to soon share them with the world and let them bloom.