Day 20: how important education is

I do think education is important: a formal education and the learning-from-your-life-experiences-and-other's-kind-of-education." I've had a formal education and I continue to learn from my life. And I learn from the lives of others.

I went through the public education system - Gwinnett County in fact. Arcado Elementary, Trickum Middle, Parkview High. My high school degree got me into Georgia College & State University where I got a B.S. in Special Education. That served me well for 8 years. Then, as life moved on, I discovered that I wanted to be a school counselor. So...I have a Masters in School Counseling from Georgia State University. Georgia State has a highly respected counseling program, known world-wide. I'm proud to have a degree in counseling from GSU. I kept a 4.0 all through grad school while working full-time too. Go me! Someday I want to get my Specialists degree in school counseling. So my formal education has gotten me where I want to be.

These days, I'm learning more from just living life and listening to others. I realize that I'm not very well educated on lots of worldly things. I couldn't hold a lengthy intelligent conversation about politics, motorcycles, rugby, the state of our country, science, economics, electronics, etc... But I can talk (and listen) at length about the inner workings of the heart, mind, soul, what makes people tick, how their experiences have shaped them, what their struggles are, how they deal with their struggles, how they are (or aren't) resilient. I can talk intelligently about nutrition, recipes, healthy lifestyles, running, pilates, yoga, personality types, relationships, struggles, the development of children, etc... I am a "heart" person, not a "mind" person. So in conversations about "mind" topics, you will see me listening carefully, trying to process the information and come up with an appropriate question or comment, while I'm also wondering what's really going on with that person. And quite frankly I admire people who can talk on and on about "mind" topics and debate with each other. It can be interesting to listen to (and sometimes boring). In conversations about "heart" topics, you will hear and see me listening, encouraging, challenging, questioning, empathizing. I'm pretty intuitive and can read between the lines to hear things people may not verbalize. I can figure out what the most important thing is to them, by how they talk about it and when it's mentioned in the conversation. Ernie Forrester helped me realize that my "gift to the world" is encouraging others. He's right - that comes naturally to me. I'm good at encouraging. My formal education didn't teach me that. My life and experiences with others taught me that.