Not Quite

 

I was so tired of college by the end of it. What with working 20 hours a week in the snack bar and student teaching - both of which I loved - I wanted out. I was done with classrooms, or so I wanted to be.

Our class was the first, though, to be required to get a Masters to teach. Yuck. I had two offers, took one in a small school district and started my life while deciding to ignore higher education for a year. 

I made it two more years before I decided to quit my master's and my teaching. Between listening to people in the teachers' room saying more money could be made and being fed up with adjunct teachers getting paid to make me sit in a classroom that really didn't have anything to do with what I was doing, I left. 

It took me less than a year to realize I'd made a mistake. I wanted to go full-time for my degree and be done with it, but Elmira didn't have daytime graduate classes. They were willing, though, to let me take independent classes, along with some that were in the evening. It took me the year, while working part time and buying our house, but I walked the stage, done.

A master's in hand, I was much like the guy above, I didn't say learning, but I did say "classes." And it's been true. Oh, I've continued learning but not by sitting in classrooms. Life experiences, friends and family time, and work have been my classrooms. Reading too. Now retired, every morning I open New Yorker, The Week, or my novel of choice and soak up knowledge. 

I'm still a student, just not of the classroom.

Me