Higher Education

Sometimes I feel very guilty about not completing college. If I'd finished a degree, I'd be able to get a better job, I'd have an oh-so-official piece of paper hanging on my wall, and I'd be besieged by telemarketing calls asking for alumni donations.

Today is not one of those days.

I've always joked about the fact that I was enrolled in the University of Life, but more and more I'm beginning to realize that it's not a joke. Despite the fact that I'm not sending off thousands of dollars to a univeristy bursar's office, I'm always learning. Actually it isn't that I'm learning; it's more like I'm unlearning the mental roadblocks I'd set up for myself years ago.

Back in the earlier years of my education, I learned what I was "good at." I was good at English and biology, but atrociously bad at art and athletics. I was passable at music, good at math (although incredibly bored by it), and so-so at history. This narrowed my views as to what I felt I could succeed at; I never took any art classes beyond the basic requirements, while I took every writing class I could get my hands on.

By the time I reached college, I focused on my basic requirements for my major, but still looked through the other course offerings with a bit of envy. There were so many other interests that I had, but they had no place in my course load. I only needed so many humanities electives, and I couldn't find a way to fit in Music Theory and Introduction to Film and Comparative Religions and Photography into my schedule when I was forced to complete Statistics and Chaucer. It was frustrating. No college, as far as I know, offers a major called General Studies for the Easily Distracted.

Over the past few years, I've realized that a major part of learning is just telling yourself, "I can do this." Back when Rosencrantz and I used to go to lunch every Thursday afternon, we started hitting the local craft store and coming home with a project for the day. One day we bought unpainted wooden whirligigs in the shape of daisies and spent the rest of the day painting them. I had no idea what I was doing, but I painted in colors that I felt looked good together, and ended up quite pleased with the results. (I ended up giving them to my mother, sister and grandmother that year for Mother's Day. I think they all thought I was nuts.) One day we came home with packages of Fimo modeling clay, intent on making fairies for Rosencrantz's garden. I toiled over the same piece of clay for hours, starting over a thousand times, but by the end I had created the figure I saw in my head. She was by no means a masterpiece, and I doubt any museum will be calling to acquire her for their collection, but I was happy with my finished product. Another wall in my head was knocked down.

I've always said that I was unable to write poetry in meter and verse. One night at JohnnyB's, I completed the lyrics to a song. It just came to me. Verses. Choruses. It rhymes. It's coherent. I kinda like it. All that's missing is the music. (And that's a big stumbling block, because currently the refrain gets sung in my head to the tune of "Livin' La Vida Loca," and that must stop right now. Goth love songs should not be sung in the key of Ricky Martin.)

Last year, the University of Cincinnati offered a Mini Medical College in their continuing education curriculum, and I was on the phone giving them my credit card number within an hour of finding out about it. For four weeks, I sat in a crowded auditorium every Wednesday, furiously taking notes about the digestive system and how the brain processes emotions. I have no idea what to do with this knowledge, but I looked forward to my class every week. I'm not looking into med school anytime soon, but I had the best time ever just learning about something that fascinated me. When the class ended, I made a promise to myself that I would never stop learning. (At that point, I intended to take a continuing ed class every quarter, but monetary constraints put an end to that.)

I'm still holding myself to that promise. It may not be through a matriculated school, but I'm trying, as the latest PBS slogan goes, to "stay curious." I've driven Roger Mexico absolutely insane asking him about the creative processes he goes through when creating music. (I fully intend to question JohnnyB about his artwork in the same manner when he comes back to Cincinnati.) I'm fascinated with the different ways that we think about arriving at our own personal finish lines of creativity, whether it be a finished poem or a song or a fully rendered drawing of a character for a fantasy series.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have become a constant source of information for me as well. At this point, Guildenstern is teaching Tai Chi and studying massage therapy, while Rosencrantz is finishing up her degree at Northern Kentucky University and preparing to teach a workshop on basic movement. They are always happy to share the knowledge they have learned in their University of Life studies, and as a result I have become more interested in the various subjects they have discovered and explored. I've become a more complete person in sharing views and opinions and lessons with them, but I still have so much more to learn and investigate.

I'm constantly learning about interpersonal relations by watching my parents, my sister with her husband and my niece, my friends and their significant others. You can't get that kind of practical knowledge from a textbook.

It inspires me that I have so many friends that believe that Life is constantly teaching us something, that take so much joy in creating and learning and sharing their knowledge with the rest of the world. Rosencrantz once postulated that everyone in the world has something to teach us, be it good or bad. A lot of the time it adds up to a 3x5 card's worth of teaching; I am lucky to have friends who have an OED's worth of information to pass along.

I've gone from thinking I'd never be able to put anything out on the internet fit for human consumption to writing this blog on a semi-regular basis, learning a smidgen of HTML and working slowly towards upgrading my site into a more encompassing portrait of my life. (Thank you again, Vahn.) I've gone from having a folder full of poetry that no one had ever read to joining an active poetry group and self-publishing a miscellany of my works, including a work of short fiction. I've gone from being afraid of expressing my views on current events and philosophy (because I didn't feel knowledgable enough to share) to communicating how I feel about what goes on around me on a daily basis. I've gone from quietly appreciating my friends' creative efforts in a dumbfounded sense of awe to actully being able to communicate what I like and how it makes me feel. It's been a big step for me, and each inch I move forward makes me more determined to continue even further.

So yeah, I may not have my degree. But I'm working towards a more important goal. I'm finding my voice; discovering whre I fit in the Universe. I'm majoring in Personhood, and it's a pretty tough curriculum at times. There's no diploma, but my courseload is full.