My cumulative learning experience has been extremely balanced thus far. And perhaps cyclical. While in high school, I wanted to create concept art for video games. Actually I wanted to program video games; however, my love/hate relationship with math kept me from that.
But before I dove into the world of video games even further, I fell in love with drama. Because I always enjoyed English class, my mother having been an English teacher for thirty years, theatre was the logical vein off the artery. During my junior year of high school, I took up plays and musicals and ultimately decided to pursue it as a career. After two years off emotional ups and downs and two colleges later, I found myself at OSU main campus pursuing a BA in English and a minor theatre. After wrapping up the undergraduate levels of college, I then earned my Master's at OSU in English language arts.
Then what? I taught English language arts at Centerburg Middle and High School for three years, directing their musicals and plays to boot, all the while finding that my enjoyment of video games and graphics never vanished. I discovered COTC's program while having a guest speaker from the school present to my juniors. How ironic, yes? After three years of teaching I went back to school. Enter the DMD program at COTC.
To put it shortly - I missed expressing my own artistry. I taught how to express one's self clearly. How to synthesize and analyze. But all the while, something was missing. What great book had I written? What great work was mine besides the diploma that occupied the corner of my bookshelf? I needed more.
So how is it cyclical? In a couple of ways. I continue to direct, but now I am directing at Big Walnut. My old school...where this all started.
I am picking up graphic and web design, a close second to video games.
And as I started out as a student and became a teacher, I am a student once again. I find that I am still a teacher in many ways - mentoring a cast member or helping a classmate. I hope to reenter the profession down the road.
I would continue this relationship with education that I have as a pupil forever if I could. A full-time student, picking up majors left and right. I've already mastered the purposeful use of fragments. What more can I learn? Quite honestly, I want to study anthropology now based entirely from the video that we had to watch for class.
Learning amazes me. Nothing is as satisfying as discovering something new. And of course, learning never ends, but there does seem a point that most people reach where he or she enters the live of passivity and mediocrity that I shudder to think about. What brings people to this? Marriage? Kids? Age? Food? The pursuit and need of money? Hard to say.
In many ways, I am content. But in the quest for knowledge, I am not so sure. Hopefully it will not get in the way of my marriage and the life that we're designed to adopt. Eh.
3 comments:
I believe that we can never learn enough. I think that if we stop trying to gain knowledge that we stop making our brain work, thus leading to memory loss. Call me crazy if you will, but it seems to me that the more we try to eduacate ourselves the more we can challenge ourselves.
I must say that I relate to your story very well. Not so much that I have done the things you've done, but that at one point in my life I wanted too. I had plans out of high school to major in English, more specifically in the teaching of literature. In school, the teachers that always inspired me the most were my Literature and Drama teachers. There's something about the written word that moves me (when written well that is).
I must admit that while the dream of teaching faded, I still wonder what my life would have been like if I had followed that goal.
It's inspiring to me to hear your story, to hear that you've learned so much and still continue to hunger for knowledge. Well done.
Thank you, zbiggs. Several of my teacher coworkers came from corporate backgrounds. One close friend was a journalist for a decade and a couple of years. She entered teaching because she felt that she had valuable experience that could be transmitted to the students. She has made a name for the journalism student staff.
My point...you can always go back ;)
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