Always Learning

It seems from a few moments after I was born I have always been learning about something. It is a process that has never really stopped, I believe, for anyone. Continued education in my life and for my family has been a welcomed and challenging process. Though the choice to continue my education here at Rose has been a choice of my own, there have been many events in my life that brought me here and even more events to guide me afterwards.

From birth to Pre-K was the time of discovery on my own and my parents second attempt at a type of home schooling. My sister was there first experiment though I feel that she has been an independent thinker since birth, my parents did very well with both her and I. It was the time that they taught me talk, walk, eat, and mostly be a civilized person. We are still improving on the latter but I am turning out fine I feel no matter what my spouse may say at times. I do not remember most of it at all to be honest but the seed that was sown over thirty years ago would begin to take root into the tree we see now today.

The stories that could be told of my K-12 years of education number around the thousands, some are great and some are of disaster. The main theme though would be that I survived and graduated, barely at the end but I still graduated. I experienced the same twists and turns that every child feels that they experience alone and no one else understands my problems, especially my parents. My parents became weird aliens from another planet that did not know a thing about anything I was going through. If I only knew then what I know now I would have shut up, listened, and done what I was told more often. Yet these moments of rebellion, experimentation, and when they don’t touch it’s hot, it is indeed hot, lead me into the beginning of an education that less than 1% of Americans partake in.

I think my time in the Military was my most crucial and concrete learning experience. You must admire the approach of basic training; tear an individual down to nothing and build him back up as a soldier and team player. It was the swift kick in the rear that I needed for my time between high school and basic training was a whole learning experience of what not to do when you think you know it all. It would mold my mind set forever, but the most important lesson to grasp would be that the mold is never full.

There is a day in everyone’s life where they turn a certain age and realize they are grown up and think, “Now what?” I am sure for some there are many variations to it with some more harsh for others, but that moment might have happened to me around the age of thirty. So now….. what? Well I found the answer was that I did not want to work the floor at Tinker AFB forever. I feel I would commit many harsh mistakes when it came to trying to run my shop from the everyday worker position so I set out to take the position of a boss. I figured if I cannot change things from the floor level I will advance enough to make the changes I feel need to happen. That resting place would be at the position of Deputy Chief. Mr. Smith currently fills that spot quit well and, with the help of my supervisor, both have been a wonderful mentor for my job and goals. It was the two of them that pushed me to continue my education and get off the floor to make a difference in the future.

All these moments in my life combined one after another have greatly influenced my education to where I am now. I truly feel that I can and will earn a Bachelors degree, I would be the first in my family, and to even continue to the Masters level. It is as important to me as it is important to my family, not only to earn a better living for them but to also set an example that even with a full time job and helping raise three children it can be done. For the greatest education to have is to realize that till the day you die you will never stop learning.Noble Text