There are two kinds of people in life: those who continue learning well past the last ringing of the high school class bell, and those who are trudging through life praying for retirement.
In my own life, 40 have finally arrived. Am I old? No. Should I feel old? Why?
School is twenty years in the past for me, 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.
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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