I can remember when I was in Elementary School, complaining to my friends that the government would preach family values, but yet they wanted us to be in school away from our families, like we were in jail! I would even go to the nurse’s office claiming that I threw up, to see if my mom would pick me up and take me home.
Ok, so as a kid, I exaggerated a lot and made up stories. Who didn’t? My best friend and I would spend nights on the phone thinking of ways to get out of going to school. She hated it too.
What’s funny about this is that I went on to complete High School, receive a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a Masters Degree in School Counseling, a certificate in Human Resources Management, and most recently I completed preparatory classes for the Professional in Human Resources exam (PHR). And now I find myself wondering, what’s next? Perhaps learn to speak Italian or take a Global HR course.
My best friend went on to complete High School, receive a Bachelors Degree in Education, and a Masters Degree in Special Education. As a teacher, if you want to move up a pay grade, you need to complete an additional amount of credits beyond your Masters Degree, so she recently enrolled in her 2nd masters program.
We were speaking on the phone recently and laughing over how ironic it is that we complained about school since we were six years old, and now we’re 30 and can’t stop going. We’ve finally realized that going to school and learning new things is inevitable, and I think we finally like it.
Maybe the difference is now that we’re older; we get to choose what we want to learn more about or we can understand now why the government and our employers promote training and development.
The more you learn … the more you have to talk about with other people, the more confident you seem to feel, and the more your peers and employer value your input. It’s not so bad being a well-rounded individual after all.
By the way, I did pass the PHR exam, which states that I have demonstrated a mastery of the HR body of knowledge. It also states that I have accepted the challenge of staying informed of new developments in the HR field. Looks like I’ll be a lifetime learner!
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If you're in IT, there is no choice. Either you're a lifetime learner, or you're rendered obsolete in 6-10 years.
jrandom42 - Completely true. In the IT world, changes occur very frequently and rapidly. No time to blink.
My brother is in the IT industry and he is always going to seminars, taking new courses, and going for certifications.
You definitely have to be a lifetime learner in the IT industry if you want to keep in the game and be successful!
jrandom.. 6-10 years? Cool! I only have to completely relearn everything I know 2 more times before I retire! :-)
Wait, you talked about 'the government' in elementary school...
I call you on your lie. Nobody between the age of 4-8 talks about the government, you haven't learned about it yet and you certainly aren't going to start studying it when you have the choice of playing with dolls or friends.
Scott,
That's only because businesses tend to hang on to legacy systems. I know a few that still have VAX systems, with less processing power and storage than my laptop.
Anonymous - Believe me I knew about the government from the day I was conceived. My mom and my entire extended family have always been very active in politics and are avid news watchers. I always overheard them talking about what was going on in the world.
So yes, I played with my Barbie’s, but I also knew a lot about the government as well. Plus, my mom was a teacher and a history buff so she made sure my siblings and I learned about our country at an early age.
It's not only what you learn in school, but what you learn at home :)
Actually I just think you hated K-12. If I am recalling my personal history with teachers correctly many high school teachers were somewhat cruel and bordered on being burnt out husks. I can't say the same for many of my college professors (on a side note the A&E channel has a reality show about high school principals; boy do their policies and ideas look ridiculous when viewed through my now adult eyes). I certainly did hate K-12, in fact I barely graduated from high school. But, that didn't stop me from getting a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree. High School doesn't teach kids much and in some cases holds them back. Unless you are a star student, interesting K-12 classes are not available (they are reserved for the suck-ups). College is different because anyone can take just about any class they are interested in. Nobody tries to stop you. I was forced to take Spanish even though I requested French in high school; the reason was because only "good" students were allowed to substitute French for a Spanish class. To this day I have never needed Spanish and don't remember anything I took in class (however needing to know a little French came up in antho and geography theory classes I took in college, but I had never taken it in high school).
My point is that K-12 isn't meant to really teach anything and generally after junior high, it potentially can be all "repeat" info. I would even argue that K-12 forces some students to throw away their best "learning" years for practically nothing in return. Then years later as adults these grown up kids end up in night school trying to "get by" while working full time to graduate. The system really wastes the average person’s best years for learning and it’s never going to change.
Congrats on passing the PHR! Life long learning is what makes life worth living.
yeah, but can you unwrap a bar of soap?
Fun, easy read. A couple points to add:
1) You are talking about education or schooling in the article not life long learning. The stories related here refer to the 'pay to practice' game of career and job success. We agree to endeavor and pay for a schooling programs that get us more of what we want (money, promotions, new titles, a fresh career).
2) We humans learn, relearn and download updates continually like a server that never shuts off. Components may fail or drag and when they do our internal learning program simple adjust and finds new components to run on. Ever human is a life long learning by nature.
3) In this new Voice Age*, the phrase life long learner refers to someone committed to and engaged by frequent downloads and updates of relevant and/or immediately useful information.
4) So relevance and payoff have a lot to do with both schooling and learning. Formal schooling during childhood maintains very little relevance ~ kids don't like that. Relevance increases as we reach legal age and can power our own directives.
5) Most kids and adults don't see skill building or learning as the payoff but life long learners do. Formal school type learning is usually just a means to an end for most folks.
Authentic life long learners just want to learn stuff - formally or not! - big payoff or not! - highly relevant or not! We could call them the Mega Servers of our human tribe.
Peace and Plenty,
Karen
Footnote:
*(S. Covey http://shopping.franklinplanner.com/shopping/catalog/productbooks.jsp?id...)