Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).
I began by checking the meaning of item and found the following – an individual article or unit, especially one that is part of a list, collection, or set. Then I started to think about the meaning of meaning. Is an education an item? Is it an individual unit? Can it be considered part of a list, collection, or set? Let’s put it this way – I started school when I was four years old. I continued until I was 18. Along the way I collected many items of knowledge and many certificates to prove it. Then I went to Paris for a year to perfect my French – now that was an expensive adventure, I can assure you of that. Next came Santander, Spain, for a whole summer, to do for my Spanish what Paris had done for my French. I guess I didn’t really pay for these items, as my parents did, though I helped a little, with odd jobs here and there.
These adventures were followed by 3 years of undergraduate studies. They were covered in part by my local government authority, for which I am eternally grateful, also by my parents, and then I too assisted, again with odd jobs and summer work. Next came graduate school, at the University of Toronto. This was financed by my earnings as a Teaching Assistant and then a Teaching Fellow. My beloved and I got married in Canada, and she found work and also assisted with graduate school and the general cost of living. Assisted? She carried me along when the work load grew too heavy.
Then there was a Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship that helped finance two more years of study in Santander, Spain, where I completed manuscript research at the Biblioteca Menendez y Pelayo. This was followed by my first job, as a lecturer, at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. I taught full-time while completing my doctorate, but my education did not stop there.
I pursued coaching certificates with the National Coaching Certification Program of Canada and soon related coaching methods to in-class teaching methods. This revolutionized my teaching. As did a Certificate in Multi-Media Studies (at UNB), followed by courses in Digital Film and Video. Then came a Teaching Certificate from IATHE – the Institute for the Advancement of Teaching in Higher Education (based in Ottawa, but no longer extant). My Certification process was topped off by a Certificate in Creative Writing from Humber College, Toronto.
All of these degrees and certificates cost money. All contributed to the list of items that go together to form my education. But a personal education, in the meaning I give to the word, goes way beyond an accumulation of certificates. It is a life -long process of growth, personal development, and understanding, of reaching out to other human beings and helping them to create their own lives and their own paths to life-long learning.
Has this been expensive? You bet it has. But its worth is priceless compared to remaining static and enmired in a past knowledge that never develops and never grows, as sometimes – I might even write ‘often’ – happens when learning stops with the acquisition of the Ph.D.
When asked what I teach, my reply is always the same – “People, real, live people.” And that is something that I continue to do whenever and wherever I can. “To know the cost of everything and the value of nothing” – I scarcely remember – nor do I care to know – what cost I paid for each step along a road along which I am still travelling. But I do know and totally appreciate the value of the continuing education that I working so hard to buy.
rogermoorepoet 