Learning

As I was riding the bus to get to my first class, I had a sudden realization. Today, I have a better understanding of what Papa meant when he kept telling me that a college degree doesn't make you smarter. Its life that does that.

I don't like new situations. I don't like being thrown into a room full of people I don't know. I really don't like it when the two guys sitting behind me are talking about which high schools they just graduated from and I realize how different I am from them.

They haven't struggled with infertility, they haven't had to worry about losing their job and putting food on the table to feed their family. Those are life experiences that the will eventually have, unfortunately. Those experiences will change them, they will teach them, they will make them stronger.

Yet today these "kids" have taught me a valuable lesson. They don't care. The only person in the room bothered by my age is me. They are too busy in their own lives and living off their own experiences that they don't care that they were 6 when I graduated high school. They don't care. I'm what they want to be when they graduate. They want to get married and have a family and a job that they love.

I didn't realize, until today, that college teaches you more than just the things found in books. It teaches you that sometimes, no matter how much you don't want too, that you have to do things alone. It teaches you that sometimes you have to stand on your own two feet and that you have to be the oldest or youngest in the room. You have to learn how to stand alone before you can ever truly begin to support someone else.

I realize that for some people, they have had to stand on their on for a while. Every one's life is different, their experiences different. What they take away from each experience and each situation is different, yet similar at the same time.

Even though I've been in the real world for a while now, I know that no matter what, there are still things that I'm going to have to face alone. I also know that I have to learn that I worry more about what other people think about me, than what they actually do. I have got to learn to be comfortable in my own skin. They don't care that I'm 31, they just want to pass the class and graduate. That I can relate too.