I want to thank everyone who took the time to email me with what they found to be useless things they had taken in school. Now on with today’s blog: I was watching a YouTube video featuring Alice Roberts. I saw her first on archaeology shows, but it was a comment in the show where she was being interviewed that intrigue me. She said that when she was in school, it felt as if she was always working towards a goal. She implied when she graduated, it felt like she no longer had a goal and went on for further education.
You and I spent all of our early life in school. I remember it seemed an endless task. Every year there was something new to learn. These days children start even earlier by going to preschool. I think most adults my age experience with school were we began when we were about five, and including kindergarten, we spent thirteen years before we finished high school at age eighteen or about 72% of our life up to that time was spent in school! My reaction to schooling was not that of Ms. Roberts. It was something I had to do before I could get on with my life. Even then, my life wasn’t my own because, in those days, we had a draft. I had military service to complete before I could live my life as I wanted to. Military service added at least two more years or 80% of my life up to that time would be spent obligations before I would be free.
I just wanted to hurry up and get schooling and military service out of the way. It felt like outside forces were controlling my life. I knew military service was required because my grandfathers had served in World War I, and my father had served in World War II, so I knew there’d be a war to fight someplace when I was growing up. As much as I didn’t want to lose two years of my life, I knew I had to serve my country. On my 18th birthday, I was out of the country and registered for the draft at an embassy. My draft board was #100 (foreign). When my military service obligation was over, I was free wanted to get on with my life and live it as I wanted to live it. Mother nature had another idea. I went from being married and expecting in addition to our family to being single and having to start again in a day. However, that’s a story for another time. If
