Friday, October 5, 2007

Resumé - part one, RVG's education

To say I want to be unconventional would be understating my goals here. See an earlier post quoting Enlightened Leadership. The resumé model is broken, and needs updating (a total demolition and re-building).

My formal, in-class, "recognized by a piece of paper" education started in the fall of '79 (yes - I know - that's a long, long time ago) and "ended" in '86. So, 1986 would be about the time that my real education began. I'll cover that in subsequent posts.

Now, if you'll allow me, I'll go one step back. I finished high school (Grade 12) in three years. I had a scheduling conflict one semester, and the options I took led to discovering that I could (potentially) get high school done a year early. Grade 13 was a real eye-opener for me, and that grade ended up taking a year and a half to get done satisfactorily. I learned that I wasn't the "hot shot" that I thought I was.

On to university. I took the humbling process that began in grade 13 and continued it. I really had no idea how I was ever going to graduate, and even started investigating alternatives. I found two guys to work with, and that made all the difference. My "graduating" was really a team effort. I learned that I worked better as part of a team, and that the results of team effort was greater than either of the team members could have accomplished on their own. I also learned to keep going. I had two strikes against me, and couldn't afford a third (I would have been invited to find a learning institution more suited to my abilities, if you get my drift). The stress of this was always there. I even had a dream after graduation that I hadn't really gotten it done.

The biggest lesson I learned though was; how to learn.

I had started my lifelong learning journey. Gandhi was definitely right when he said; "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

What's the value of it all?
Piece of paper: worthless.
The doors the paper opens: valuable.
Learning to learn: priceless.

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