There are two kinds of people in life: those who continue
learning well past the last day of high school, and those
who are trudging through life praying for retirement.
In my own life, 40 has finally arrived. Am I old? No. Should I
feel old? Why?
School is twenty years in the past for myself, and yet, everyday
is a learning experience for me. I am still learning astronomy
and engineering from The Science Channel, and I am engaged in a
daily pursuit of learning to be a better computer programmer.
I was one of those unlucky soles in that I graduated from high
school in 1983. My choice career since 1979 was that of a
computer programmer. In 1983, when I entered college, I was
stoked. I was going after my dream to be a computer programmer.
Unfortunately, I was relegated to gaining my education from a
two-year college, whose computer science teacher chose to live in
the past. The college that was close to my home was my starting
point in my college career, and they were stuck in the
technologies of the 1960's and 1970's.
While in high school, I had been privileged enough to be able to
have Personal Computers in the classroom. I was able to be
schooled in computer programming on TRS-80's (fondly called Trash
80's by those who used them) and on the first Apple Computers to
enter the marketplace.
The writing was on the wall. The future of computer programming
was in the personal computer market. Yet, our instructor would
only teach us Fortran, an already dying language. (By the mid- to
late-1980's, nearly every major business had done away with those
massive mainframe computers that relied upon the Fortran
operating system.)
It was a very frustrating time in my life. I left college,
disillusioned in the fact that I could not learn the kind of
programming that I wanted to do in my life.
Move forward eleven years into the future. It was 1994 and
Windows 3.11 was the computer operating system of choice. Now,
that was a long time ago.
In 1994, I hooked myself up with my first personal computer, and
then began the self-teaching process. In 2001, I began teaching
computer programming to students who were paying for Adult
Continuing Education courses as our local vo-tech.
For me, programming is an everyday learning experience. This past
weekend, I was finally able to break through in my understanding
of a concept that I had previously had a lot of problems in
comprehending.
It was two days past my 40th birthday, and I had a major learning
breakthrough. Even at 40, I am still young in heart and mind.
If I were to contribute only one thing to my youthful feelings
that would be the fact that even at 40, I find time in my day to
learn new things.
Adult Continuing Education is the ACE up my sleeve that allows
me to wake up everyday happy to be alive.
Are you continuing your education, or are you among the poor
folks who are praying for time to race by so that you may enter
into retirement? (the average person lives only 3 years past
retirement. why should you be racing to the grave? instead,
contemplate the possibility of racing to a life worth living...)
Adult Continuing Education is a worthwhile endeavor, whether you
are 25, 40 or 85. Please endeavor yourself to learn something new
today. You will feel much better once you have done so.
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