by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n
Life is full of bad experiences. There is always something that can be learned in each experience. The bad experience is a form of tuition. The learning is a form of education. Nothing guarantees we get the education with the tuition. The education, however, is there for our choosing.<\/strong><\/p>\n College is pretty simple: you pay the tuition and get an education. Well, maybe it is simple in in principle, but I don’t know how often it really happens. The favorite saying of one professor I knew was<\/p>\n Education is the one thing people are willing to pay for and not get.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He would tell us that in class and when someone disagreed, the professor would reply, “if I said class dismissed now, half an hour early, how many of you would protest with, ‘No, I paid for a full hour of your time and I want it.'” Case closed.<\/p>\n Life is not as simple as college was (if anyone out there reading this is in college now, sorry to disappoint you). Tuition is not usually paid in money; it is paid in pain, frustration, angst, and several other not-so-much-fun words. Education is what is available for learning. Sometimes it isn’t easy to find. Sometimes the pain of the tuition blocks the learning that is available.<\/p>\n For example, the week before Christmas, we spent the night in a gas station parking lot in a snowstorm. All went well as we reached our destination safely. The delays, worries, and fatigue were the tuition.<\/p>\n Education? Did I learn anything? Yes. Never hit the road in the snow without a full tank of gas. Bring a snow shovel with you. Have your cell phone charger with you (the one that works in the car). Bring food and drink with you. Big education (the things that I didn’t do): leave at a better time to to avoid the snow and make several motel reservations along the route in case you need them.<\/p>\n Another example: saying something in jest that got me in trouble. I won’t cite the specifics of any of the cases, but this has happened to me at least a dozen times. The trouble was the tuition. The education? Watch out when you have the urge to say something that you think is funny. I finally absorbed the education about the 10th or 11th time I paid the tuition.<\/p>\n A computer programming example: making a backup of source code before changing it. The tuition? Finding myself with changed software that didn’t do anything and not being able to return to a working version. Wow, that was painful. The education? Always make a copy of the working software so you can go back to it. The first several times I paid this tuition, I didn’t get the education. The education finally stuck.<\/p>\n Something hurts? Something embarrassing? Feel a burning sensation? That is the tuition. There is an education out there somewhere. Try to see through the pain, find the education, and get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips Life is full of bad experiences. There is always something that can be learned in each experience. The bad experience is a form of tuition. The learning is a form of education. Nothing guarantees we get the education with the tuition. The education, however, is there for our choosing. College is pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,51,48,20],"tags":[143,173,170,142],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-change","category-choose","category-general-systems-thinking","category-learning","tag-change","tag-choose","tag-general-systems-thinking","tag-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}