BS: Things You Learned After Graduating School

Subject: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Azizi
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 07:48 AM

Last night I happened upon a photograph of me graduating from high school. That photograph made me think about how much had happened to me since that year I graduated, and how much I had learned since then.

I'll post some of the things I have learned in this thread, and invite you to share what things you have learned since you graduated from "institutions of higher learning".

Thanks in advance,

Azizi

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Azizi
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 07:51 AM

I learned how to drive a car.

I learned how to how to post comments/questions on the Internet.

Since I was afraid of doing both of these things, I learned how to do things inspite of my fear.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Azizi
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 07:54 AM

I learned that sometimes things don't happen when I want them to happen, but sometimes those things happen later on.

And I learned that sometimes things that I want to happen don't happen at all. And sometimes things I don't want to happen happen anyway.

It bes that way sometimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Azizi
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 07:57 AM

I've learned that sometimes it's important to speak up and sometimes it's best to be silent.

But I'm still learning how to determine when it's best to do one and not to do the other.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: PMB
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 08:00 AM

Things I learned after high school (~ sixth form in the UK?)

- that I was not religious, and never had been.
- that drinking 6 pints of keg bitter often makes you feel ill
- that music is for creating, not just consuming
- that I loved my parents but didn't need them
- I found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red -
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 09:30 AM

I discovered that the Universe doesn't give a rat's ass what I think or want.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 12:01 PM

I discovered that you can get more friends, more enemies, more lovers, more 'stuff', more money, more obligations, more information,.......but always less time, and usually less energy.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 12:29 PM

I also learned, just a couple weeks after high school graduation, that I was NOT immortal and that I COULD be killed or die.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 12:36 PM

After high school, in four (and a half, because I took a lot of stuff I didn't need) years at the University of Minnesota, I don't know that I learned a whole lot that really mattered. Except that I didn't want to spend my life as a teacher.

In two years in the Army, I did learn some things about life and the world.

In two and a half years of specialty school for my trade, I learned necessary skills and background, but nothing of great moment.

Then, at age 30, I started the job that occupied the next thirty-six years of my life, and THERE I learned a lot!   Starting with how ill-prepared I was for real life. I was petrified! Everything before had been preparation, and it STILL was not sufficient, I felt. I did manage to fog it through, as I say, for thirty-six years, and ended feeling that I was well educated and good at what I did (and still do on a part-time basis in retirement).

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 12:51 PM

I learned that school ain't it's all cracked up to be... Especially college... Okay, I did learn a lot my second time around in college majoring in painting and printmaking but my first degree, other than it qualified me to teach school, was purdy much a senseless hazing experience... But the college atmosphere in 60's with all that was going on was amazing... But then again, it was the 60's, wasn't it???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 12:51 PM

On or about April 14, 1968, I realized that 18th Century Literature is nice to read and study, but it wouldn't keep you alive in Vietnam.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: gnu
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 01:29 PM

I have learned how little I know. More some days than others.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: RangerSteve
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 06:34 PM

People don't stop being catty and vindictive when they grow up.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: bobad
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 06:46 PM

I didn't know how to learn while in school, I have learned how since.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Azizi
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 08:33 PM

Thanks to all who have posted to this thread thus far. The responses have been interesting.

Special kudos to PMB.

Sometimes it's good when Mudcat's "above the line" and "below the line" divisions become blurred. I think your "Things I learned after high school" post was one of those times.

Is that your composition? It's great!

I'm curious if the "as in England" ending means that you started in England, left there, and went elsewhere and learned that these things were also true in that other location as well as in England...

or am I reading too much {or too little} into that composition?

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 09:13 PM

I learned that the school I attended did not, in fact, ever exist as such. It was a giant hot dog stand and all we "students" were doing all day long was preparing hot dogs for consumption by aliens from the planet Xzortzis. Everything I thought I learned was actually implanted directly into my brain by Xzortzisian mind control beams while I had been ladling sauerkraut.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Joe_F
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 09:26 PM

That I was not going to be a physicist. A lot of songs. To drive a car. To drive a nail, to drive a car with a manual transmission, and to change a diaper, all in one autumn. To enjoy myself at a low level of competence, including getting laid. That I am no use to people who are doing what is worth doing.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: PMB
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 04:40 AM

The poem is by John Keats- though I wish it was mine, and yes, it's about leaving England and finding that things are the same elsewhere- but he only went as far as Scotland!

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Azizi
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 08:17 AM

Thanks, PMB, for that link to the entire poem.

I'm glad I recognized greatness when I saw it.

And, btw, I also like the end of that poem:

"So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd,
He wonder'd,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder'd.

-snip-

Change the pronoun, and that portion of Keat's poem would fit me, though the earlier part about being a naughty boy wouldn't work for me since I'm not a male and since I'm far too goody two shoes.

But the other part about being far from home fits. I certainly feel that I'm a far ways from my childhood home.

But if I had my druthers I'd go even farther-
in more ways than one.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Alice
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 09:52 AM

Like Bobert, I majored in painting and printmaking in college.
I learned you can't really make a living at it, especially in the region I live in.
Most of what is called emotional intelligence I learned after
graduating.
I learned that other families said "Love" to each other,
that they hugged and showed affection, unlike the one I came from.
I learned that I was naive and gullible and needed to wise up
to the con games of the world. I learned that being a mom has
been much more important to me than becoming a famous artist.
I learned that I could sing and entertain an audience.
I learned that I am brave enough to survive what has happened
to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: SINSULL
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 09:58 AM

That life is neither black nor white, that not everything is right or wrong, that all people are both good and bad, that life goes on with or without you and it is a precious commodity.

That money is neutral, possessions are fleeting, and dogs are loyal while cats are fickle.

At some point I started to laugh at people who identify themselves by their possessions. They think they "own" a house or a boat or a car when in fact material things are only on loan. Die and someone else will own them.

When you least expect it shit happens. Shit is good - it makes you appreciate the good things and builds character.

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Desdemona
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 02:28 PM

I've learned (and am still learning) that there is always so much more TO learn; it's a big part of what makes it worth while to get up every morning, innit?

~D

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned AfterGraduatingSchool
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 05:07 PM

I knew it all when I was twelve!

It's amazing what I've learned since!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned After Graduating School
From: Rowan
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 12:49 AM

That there are several versions of "authority" and those people that rely on rank for their status usually can't sustain much semblance of authority when it's needed.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned After Graduating School
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 03:55 AM

I learnt that almost everything I did at school wasn't worth the time I spent ignoring it.

I learnt that French is a language to be spoken, not conjugated.

I learnt that alcohol could be my friend and not my support.

I learnt that just because I was a girl, didn't mean I couldn't enjoy doing 'boys' things like riding motorbikes and plastering walls.

I learnt that life is basically unfair and if I wanted something to be right, I had to fight for it or change it myself.

I learnt there is no such thing as 'happy ever after'.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Things You Learned After Graduating School
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 09:09 AM

I also learned that I could truly enjoying learning.