Being a lifelong student means walking through a grocery store and wondering about the supply chain of an avocado. It means sitting in a board meeting and analyzing the psychological power dynamics at play rather than just checking off agenda items. It is the refusal to accept "that’s just the way it is" as a valid conclusion.
So, I still carry a notebook. I still fall down "rabbit holes" of research at three in the morning. I still look at the world with the wide-eyed, slightly anxious curiosity of a freshman on their first day of orientation. Graduation gave me a diploma, but it couldn't take away my questions. It turns out that the most important lesson school ever taught me was how to be hungry for the next one. "Even after graduating from school, I never qui...
The beauty of post-grad learning is that it is finally elective. There are no more mandatory calculus classes if your soul yearns for carpentry; there are no more standardized tests to measure your worth against a peer group. You learn because a particular bird call caught your ear, or because a line of poetry felt like a punch to the gut, or because you realized you don't actually know how a combustion engine works. Being a lifelong student means walking through a
This "un-graduated" life is fueled by a specific kind of humility. To be a student is to admit that you are incomplete. It is an acknowledgment that the person you were yesterday didn't know everything the person you are today needs to understand. While others might seek the comfort of expertise and the authority of "knowing," the perpetual student finds a strange, kinetic energy in the state of not knowing. So, I still carry a notebook