Summer School

I miss summer already. Perhaps it’s a holdback from childhood when the last school bell rang and the doors flung wide to spill kids and teens into a June they finally claimed for themselves. School worked for many people, but I wasn’t one of them. For me, real learning began after those school doors slammed shut behind me.

During summers my mind sparked, ignited because I controlled my education, unfettered by what someone else believed I should learn. Transported by books, bicycles, and blue skies—willing screens I projected a vivid imagination onto—my mind expanded as I chased whatever drew my interest until September closed in. Since those summer days of self-directed exploration, I’ve always considered any learning I’ve accomplished on my own as “summer school,” an educational program driven by someone who had my best interests in mind.

Perhaps you’re like me and felt you didn’t learn the things you really wanted to when you were in school, whether it was high school where classes were chosen for you or college where you acquiesced to parents or bought into society’s urging that the world needed more marketing people. Maybe you feel it’s too late to do anything about it now.

I’m here to tell you it’s never too late, no matter how old you are. You just need to take charge of your own education and enroll yourself into “summer school.”

All of the “lessons from the cockpit” are summer school lessons, insights I’ve learned from living life outside school walls, doing things I’ve wanted to do versus been required to do. I’m thrilled to say I’m in summer school year round, although over the last five months, I think I’ve learned more than ever. This last summer I began writing my novel, an education unto itself. I’ve enjoyed losing myself in the writing, living in the new world I’m creating. But doing so has surfaced old memories, events and experiences I hadn’t thought of in a long while. Many of these events had wedged themselves into the crevices of my mind like old photographs jutting from the pages of a closed book. I’d see a flash of color, but no recollection until I slid the memory from its neglected nook to examine within the light of what I wrote.

Many of the old lessons I explored this summer will make it into the novel. But others will not. So in a nod to my favorite season, and my favorite educational institution, my next few posts will focus on past summer school lessons recently brought to light.

Until the next post, I’d like you to think about what you’ve always wanted to learn, but never did. It does not matter if you think it has any value to society, or as a new career for yourself. The value lies in the fact you want to do it and that is enough.

Leave a comment below for what you’ve always wanted to learn or do, but haven’t yet. Aside from the fact I’d truly like to hear your dreams and desires, announcing it to the world generates a magic that sets events in motion. And if you hear a voice in your head claim you’re too old to pursue your goal, just swat it aside and remember this:

It’s never too late to become the person you are meant to be.