My colleges have taken to occasionally mocking me for the number of degrees I have or intend to have. They like to rub it in whenever I try to plead dumb about something or other - "you can't be stupid, you have X number of degrees".
What they fail to realise is that my education has less to do with my intelligence than my restlessness. I'm basically standing still in most other areas of my life, but as long as I'm studying something with an actual structure and pathway, I'm getting somewhere.
If I look back over the past three years of my life, I really only have my education and hobbies to distinguish one year from the next. Same job? Yep. Same position? Yep. Same social/personal life? Pretty much. Same abode? Yep. Have you done anything at all in the last three years? Yes! I have a Master of Information Management and I'm now partway through a Diploma of Modern Languages. Also, I've moved on from obsessing about juggling to obsessing about cycling to starting to obsess about fencing.
That reminds me, I need to juggle more often.
People with children have a bit of an advantage when it comes to having something to show for the passage of time. They can see that their lives have moved on because three years ago they were the parents of toddlers, and now they are the parents of school-aged children. Three years ago they had kids in school, but now they have young-adult offspring in university. Three years ago they were only parents, but now they are grandparents. And so it goes.
Me? I'm surrounded by people who have grown up and are now incrementally growing old. And I'm one of them. If I don't do something with my time, I'll just be treading water for the rest of my days. I want to move on - move forward - be somewhere else in my life from one year to the next. I'm not interested in moving "up" in my career (I've always been more interested in moving sideways), but I haven't been moving much at all of late.
So, I take another course and dream about getting a new job in a new town. One of these days I'm going to "move along" literally, but in the meantime I mark time by learning something new - gaining something I didn't have before. Sure, half the time it's a piece of paper and a few letters to stick at the end of my name - but I always wanted to have more letters after my name than in it.
For the record:
ReplyDeleteMIM, BEd/Ba(Hons), AACM, AALIA
I used to have GDILS, but I think the MIM replaces those (bummer). Also the AALIA is cheating a bit because that's a membership in an organisation, not a qualification. Technically the AACM is both. Eventually I hope to add GradCertEd, DMLANG and MAAP before one day settling on a PhD of some description.
I'm going to become a Doctor Of Something Relatively Useless if it kills me.