What Would You Do?

The famous words, "If I had it to do all over again, I'd _________."

Fill in the blank with your own choices.

I was chatting with a friend recently.
She felt like her parents had been disconnected from her education while she was growing up. Not unusual for the time and place. Sadly, not so unusual now, either.

She would possibly have chosen a different path if she'd had advisors to help. (spell check has queried 'advisors' but according to the online dictionary the word is correct.)

She went to college, this friend of mine, then proceeded to "waste" her college education on staying home and raising a family.

Not that *I* see it as a waste, of course. She was just told that. Often. From people who really didn't know any better. And probably from people who should have known better, too.

I have given it a little thought.

I know I have mentioned before how much I dislike(d) school.
I love to learn things. I love knowing things. I like to read, to explore, to discover. But I hated school. I am not a huge school fan now, either. I understand how we ended up with formal, compulsory schooling. It's not a pretty story. It's also not a wonder it's a mess.

I'd give you a ton of links to look at, but unless you really want to know about this stuff, you won't read them anyway.

I think this is particularly good and accurate, though.

Regarding not putting a bunch of links here for you because if you wanna know, you will find them yourself... I'm like that, too. I don't look for information or learn about something unless I want to.

And most of humanity doesn't pursue learning about something that's irrelevant to them, personally.

It's why people don't stay in school. We're not offering kids things that are relevant to their lives. We're force-feeding bits and pieces of knowledge and rote learning and making sure they're scheduled every bit of their day.

My first Girl Scout troop was mostly drawn from the local public schools. I had almost nothing in common with the parents in that troop other than having a daughter.

The longer we were together, the more obvious the differences between my child and theirs. She was so.. comfortable going her own way.

I met most of those girls in Kindergarten. They were giggly little butterflies, fluttering through life happily. They were messy with their art projects, difficult to wrangle into something resembling order, and just fun.

By the end of their second grade year, most of them had changed quite a bit. They were tired in a way they shouldn't be. Most of them were crabby after school. Some had dark circles under their eyes. They hated school. Every one of them. They hated the tests, they hated not being able to do the things they were interested in... they were also starting to get together and dislike people. They often talked about this person or that as 'weird' and/or stupid.

They no longer attacked a table full of craft supplies with reckless (or wrecking) abandon. When presented with an open ended project, they all kept waiting for someone else to start. I'm deliberately leaving Lyssa out of 'they', because she did start. She always just did her own thing. Making me extremely happy.

When someone else finally did start with a project, the other girls were timid in beginning theirs. It wasn't long before one of them would decide the others were doing it wrong... even if I'd given them no particular instructions or an example. My rule has always been that if you make something you like, you did it right.

My co-leader was very bothered by the open ended project thing, too. She always wanted an example made. If she was the one conducting the activity, she also wanted to control how the girls made their project. In particular, her daughter. I didn't try to keep track of how many times she surreptitiously fixed something her daughter or one of the other kids had made while the glue was still wet.

I have several things Lyssa made, mistakes intact. One of my favorites was a simple thing the girls made as Daisies, a Christmas card with an oval cut out for a photo and holes punched around the outside with green yarn woven through. Lyssa's was imperfect and adorable. And I hang it up every year.

Oops. I've digressed. Again.

So back to the troop.
Their 2nd grade year, the girls were joined by Breanna*. Her parents were medical professionals.

Breanna was scheduled and overscheduled and hyperscheduled and oh-my-god scheduled.
Our troop met on Thursday afternoon, right after school. When the meeting was getting over, she changed clothes in the restroom for her ballet lessons. She ate a quick dinner in the car on the way to ballet, then a small snack in the car on her way to tae kwon do. She did not get home until 9:45 PM any night of the week, according to her mother. Her mother didn't see anything wrong with this crazy schedule, either.

When she told her eight year old to 'hurry up, we have to go go go' and Breanna said, "Can't we just go home tonight?" her mother would say, "Stop whining."

It wasn't just Thursdays, either. She had riding lessons, fencing lessons, singing lessons, piano lessons and a different dance class. She also had gymnastics. And whatever sport was in season.

It was appalling. She was always tired, pale, wanting to stay home in the evening but her mom was relentless. She wanted lots of extracurricular activities "to help Breanna get into a good college."

I don't keep up with all the children I've known over the years. It would be impossible, I think.

But I just looked her up on Facebook. She evidently survived the overscheduling. I hope she's doing well in college. She looks good. I hope she doesn't waste that education by staying home with children.

I understand wanting your child to be successful. But I don't think my definition of success is the traditional one. My definition is, "are you happy doing what you're doing?"

A good job, to me, is a job that you look forward to going to. A place that you're happy. That you miss when you're not there.

Money is not the point for me. When I was in my early 20s, money was important because I bought into the whole money=success thing.

Now, if I have food on the table, a roof over my head and the internet...

I think college is fine if that's what you really want. But it's a racket. It's horrendously (and unjustifiably) expensive. Is it M.I.T. offering their entire curriculum free online? I know it's one of the big guys. Colleges and schools have not kept up with advances in learning and ways to learn.

Making it 'affordable' is being discussed quite a bit recently. Obama and other doorknobs think that it should be "freeeeeeeeee". Um, that's not free. Just like the health care and other things aren't free. We are paying for it. Why don't they just say they want it to be taxpayer funded?

If they really wanted to help people, to make education and diplomas available, CLEP testing would be free. There are so many people out there who'd be able to pass their tests because of life experience.

I get really tired of people who think a person lacks intelligence due to level of education completed. What a crock of shit. I know more than one really stupid person with a piece of paper that is supposed to mean he or she is smart.

I've mentioned being dismissed by people due to my own lack of paper. I used to feel bad about it, but you know, I'm not a puppy. I don't need a pedigree. I have nothing to prove to anyone regarding my intelligence. I have a job I love.

If I could go back in time and choose my path, would I do it differently?

Would I pursue a paper?
I don't think so.

But I regret not finding this line of work sooner.

On the other hand, I would not have developed the skill set without all the years of experience in other jobs and activities.

So no. No regrets.

What about you?