Part 1 - Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do!

I'm going to get an education!  And I'm going to do it in an incredibly refreshing way I haven't really done before.  To know where I'm going, you have to know where I've been.  So let me start by telling you the brief long, disjointed, history and highlights of my formal education up to this point.  This is part 1 of 2.

The first time I went to school I think it cost $25.  Ahh...kindergarten (I'm skipping pre-school for the sake of sparing your already short attention span) - the best, first, real year of schooling that I remember fairly well.  After 9 months of half-day schooling, I had mastered the alphabet, started reading, excelled in basic mathematics, developed musical, artistic, and new physically capabilities, started new friendships, and probably learned a million other things that I've forgotten about, or didn't realize I learned at the time.  Thank you tax payers!!  I favor strong, comprehensive, public school programs.  Bent School, you served me well!  And that is probably $25 of the best dollars my parents ever spent on my education.  (*please note, that is $25, 1987 dollars.  Despite my excellence in mathematics, I will not be adjusting for inflation.  You may pursue that calculation if so inclined).

Fast-forward to the fall of 2000, my freshman year of college begins.  Turns out my excellence in basic mathematics had failed me.  Well, maybe not the math itself, I could still plug numbers, but I had zero-to-no grasp of the reality of my tuition costs, what it really meant, and who even paid for it.  Switch from the public to private schooling sector, allow 13 years to pass, and the cost of 9 months of schooling is now something like $15,000 a year (that's tuition only).  Ok, I don't care if its 1987 dollars, or 2000 dollars, that is so many dollars!  Times four, plus cost of living, divided by my family is only marginally above poor, equals who the hell is paying for this??!  Oh, but not to worry!  "You HAVE to go to college", and "You can't put a price tag on your education", and "You'll actually make $3 million more in your lifetime than someone who didn't go to college" they all say.  They all keep saying the same stuff so it must be true.  But, back to the math!  My academic scholarship covered 40%.  I didn't know where that money (the 40%) really came from.  Outer space perhaps?  A Monopoly board?  Or maybe it didn't come from anywhere, rather it was merely a negotiation on the tuition. "You're pretty smart, here, have a better deal".  I knew that my home church would cover whatever scholarship was not covered by tuition.  Naively, I didn't understand the generosity and magnitude of this assistance at the time.  Thank you generous donors of the private sector and the Mennonite Church of Normal!!  In the end, I thought my portion of the tab would be $0.  I ended up with $14K in loans to Sallie Mae.  Luckily, locked in at a low fixed interest rate, this is something I could handle over the next 10 or 20 years.  And I did have something to show for it - 2 bachelors degrees, what I thought was a lifetime of life experience, the best friends I may ever really make, and I started to become more of a grown up.  Did I have to go to college?  Probably.  Can you put a price tag on your education?  Yes.  Approx $80,000.  Will I make $3 million dollars more in my life time than someone who didn't go to college?  Hopefully, it will never matter to me.  Was it worth it?  Absolutely.

Do you see how there is the need for this story to become a 2-part blog here?  I haven't even started to get to the fun part!!  I'm just going on and on about whatever I get started on!  Trying to be funny, trying to see if my punctuation is at least 90% correct, trying to make you laugh out loud.  Especially if you are reading this on an airplane.  I love when people laugh out loud on airplanes.  Subtly (or not so), getting on a soapbox, and conveying my personal/political/social beliefs.  But, what the hell, this is my blog!  Isn't that the epitome of what bloggers do??  So hang in there, the good stuff is just around the corner.  

The last chapter of my formal education was PA (physician assistant) school, from 2008-2010.  This was about a million times harder than kindergarten, but only cost 6000x more.  What a value!  Sadly, after another $150K in loans, I became much more pessimistic about higher education in the private sector, and it's value.  Perhaps one day, I'll be able to say it was worth it, without hesitation.  

In the mean time, I'm looking to get a different kind of higher education at a fraction of the cost, on an extended journey around the world, and I couldn't be more excited.  I'm hopeful and optimistic it will be worth every penny.  I am quitting an interesting, secure, and fun job after all.  One that over the next 35 years, may in fact make me $3,000,000 more than a college dropout.  When you type out all the zeros, it really does seem like a beaucoup bucks, but I stick to what I said about it hopefully, never mattering to me.  A very wise (and wild) man once told a children's story about how he was the richest man in all the world.  It wasn't because of the money he made, and the fancy house he built, and all the things that filled that big house filled with fancy things.  It was because his heart was so filled with love and happiness for his family and his friends and his god, and he knew he was filled with even more of their love in return.  It was a richness that he could never lose or be taken from him, and it was a richness that was worth more than any other.  The best part is that it isn't just a story, because it's also the truth.  That wise (and wild) man happens to be my dad, and I have seen first hand that he really believes it to be true and he lives that truth.  Luckily for me, it was one of the best lessons I could have learned in life, and I believe it to be true as well. 

So I look forward to the millions of new things I will learn, the lessons the world can offer me when I approach learning in whole new way, and the value I place on this education.  Sure, I may end up spending $20,000 or $30,000 over the next two years on this unconventional, advanced degree, but I am confident that it will lead to as much richness and wealth as any other traditional schooling.  Can I tempt you to do the same?

Stay tuned for part 2 - The Syllabus!  And find out what I'll actually be up to all the time!