My Real Education Started When School Let Out

The first part of Summer School, five lessons I learned outside school walls, written while Flying Colors was still a messy draft.

I miss summer already. Maybe it’s a holdover from childhood when the final school bell rang, and the doors flung wide to spill kids and teens into a budding June they could claim for themselves. Many of my friends seem to like school, but I wasn’t one of them.

For me, most of my true learning began once I walked into the outside world and those school doors slammed shut behind me.

Summertime sparked my mind, ignited it in a way sitting in a classroom never did.

Why?

Because I controlled my learning, not someone else. Transported by books, bicycles, and blue skies—the last one being a willing screen where I projected a vivid imagination—my mind expanded as I chased whatever drew my interest.

At least 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.

Maybe you’re like me and feel you didn’t learn what you really wanted to when you were in school or even college. Maybe you feel it’s too late to do anything about it now.

It’s never too late, no matter how old you are. You simply must take charge of your own education and enroll yourself in the summer school of your choosing.

By the way, every Dare to Soar piece I write is a summer school lesson in some way. Insights learned from living life outside school walls, doing the things I’ve wanted to do rather than being required to do.

I’m thrilled to say I’m in summer school year-round, although over the last five months, I’ve learned more than ever. This past summer I began writing a 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 haven’t thought of in a long while. Most of these events had wedged themselves into the crevices of my mind like the corners of old photographs jutting from the pages of a closed book. I’d see a flash of color, but no real recollection until I pulled the memory from its neglected nook to examine it within the light of what I wrote.

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

Until the next one, think about what you’ve always wanted to learn, but never did. It doesn’t matter if you think it has any value to society or as a pathway to a new career for yourself.

The value is that you want to do it. That is enough.

If you hear a voice in your head claiming you’re too old to pursue your goal, swat it aside and remember this:

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