Learning

I worked in higher education for eleven years before coming to WBCL.

Every Tuesday-after-Labor-Day, I'd watch the sidewalks fill with students trekking to their classes...most clutching paper coffee cups from the campus coffee shop...and it signified the beginning of a new year of learning.

And toward Christmas, those same students clutched coffee cups again, this time curled up in a corner on the floor outside the doors of our office...laptops and notes strewn in a semi-circle around them...frantically reviewing for finals.

The cycle of learning...the first day and the last final.

When I walked across the stage at the front of an over-crowded, over-heated gym in April of 2000, collecting my college diploma, I wasn't one of those packing up a compact car to drive to a new city and start all over with a new degree pursuit that fall. I didn't have a need {or a desire} for the achievement of an additional degree, so while many of my friends kept going, I traded in textbooks for a calculator and sat behind a desk on the same campus where I'd spent the last four years learning...and I entered the work-force.

It's been 13 years now since I walked across that stage, and I'm still no closer to running ahead for another degree than I was that day.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty about that. People look at me strangely when they find out I "only" have a bachelor's degree.

But education is expensive. This I learned while immersed in it for all those years. And it's true that while I worked there, I could have gotten a better financial deal on the classes, but I looked over the list of available degrees, none spoke to me. I couldn't have passed the math classes for a business degree, and obviously if that's true, accounting was out of the question.

Ministry degrees were the only ones that even piqued my interest, but I had to track one down that didn't require me to become fluent in Greek or Hebrew. And I didn't find it before I left to work here.

So it's a little strange that this girl who so loves her freedom from homework and finals - who has a husband who is equally done with school - put together a "Back to School" mantel this week. Right there in the living room is the token apple...the cluster of bright yellow #2 pencils in a cup...the oversized ABC letters...and some rather questionable looking school photos, circa 1988, featuring the Shaffers as fourth and fifth graders...complete with hair to pay homage to the year.

But it's the quote on the notebook paper that signifies why a home with no students would have a back to school mantle.

I don't have a desire to go back to school, but I do have a deep desire to learn. I'm thankful for that quest for knowledge and wisdom. I'm thankful to have resources to learn every day. I'm thankful to be a student of life.

And I'm thankful that in December, I don't have to cram for finals.