Learning a Mile a Minute

It started when I was young. My mom says it must have been before I was old enough to hold my own head… I was too little to remember. I do remember the constant crave of wanting to know more than I already did. Somehow I never knew enough. Ever. The following are 5 situations or people who fed that growing desire to know more.

1. Love You Forever- This is actually a pretty popular book. However, it holds a high importance to me as a daughter, a reader, and a future mother. This book was read to me every night by my mother for the first several years of my life. As I got older, I would sit in her lap and recite it with her as she read. This is my first memory of ever wanting to read. I had to know how she knew what those markings on the page were. I spent hours memorizing the words I already knew in the story, and this is how I first learned to read by the age of three. This is a book I hope to someday read to my children.

   

   Photo CC-By Erik Schepers

2. Welcome to the finest preschool around! That’s right, grandma’s house! Rather than going to a real preschool, especially since I suffered with separation anxiety, I went to grandma’s house! Here she helped refine the reading skills I had inhabited, taught me to write and spell my own name, and answered any question I may have, as best she could! Her and grandpa always encouraged me to ask questions, seek answers, and never to stop until I got an answer. Yes, at times this did bite them in the butt after the 35th “Why?” in a row, but they answered each one as best they could.

   

   Photo CC-By Kayla Rundquist

3. I can tie my own shoes! Aside from learning to read, this was the next big moment in my childhood. I could not believe there were so many different ways to tie your shoes! I HAD to know how to do each one. I would have to be a shoe tying genius. I was most certainly determined. There only existed one problem. Inevitably I would only truly perfect one, maybe two ways of tying my shoes. My heart was broken. I wanted to be the best at EVERY way to tie my shoes. This held a significant lesson for me, ultimately I would encounter many things in life that had multiple means of solutions. However, I am not humanly capable of being perfect at every solution. Most importantly, that’s okay!

   

   Photo CC-By Rriahh_

4. Teachers never stop learning. When I started elementary school, my desire to learn new things grew. I loved going to school, loved every one of my classes, and you know I had an A in every class I had. I had made up my mind. I never wanted to leave school. For this reason I wanted to be a teacher. It was so neat to me that teachers got to not only teach other kids what they already knew, but there were things my teacher didn’t know yet! That meant more learning! From a young age I vowed to learn all I could to someday pass on to my students, just like my teachers. (Mostly Mrs. Volcek and Mr. Burns)

   

   Photo CC-By WhatEveR IT CakeS!

5. From kindergarten to college, I am ready! Or so I thought. My freshman year of college was rough. I could handle the random bouts of homesickness. I could handle making all new friends. I could even handle the less than tasty cafeteria food I was forced to stomach. What I couldn’t handle was the first class I failed. Failing a class taught me a valuable lesson… if I truly wanted to learn, I had to do just that. Answers were no longer handed to me. I was not forced to be in class. It was all my responsibility. Which meant that if I wanted to learn, I could. But I had to want to learn, and then do it.

   

   Photo CC-By Pineider