education
what the heck do I mean by education? probably most of what I've learned since I escaped from the public schools. what I learned in college mostly went into my education. what I learned in graduate school certainly did, but it alone would be a curious notion of education. who needs or can use rigorous training in advanced physics or advanced mathematics or what in the world makes up poetry? those were my subjects of study in graduate school. they affected my education, but kinda like accents and umlauts affect a language. it's funny that I say my education began after I escaped from the public schools because I escaped from them *such* a little know-it-all! and then the first thing I learned starting work at White Sands Missile Range was that I knew nothing, or rather that I knew way too much but it was all wrong. well, not all wrong. basic English survived. math and physics were not wrong, just innocent and naive. history names and dates were okay, but what happened was subject to question. but the real problem was that I escaped with a gazillion answers and no questions. I had to learn and re-learn and re-re-learn so many times that my answers were false or at least shakily supported. in college, I recognized that I had to question everything I had been told and much of what I was being told. in college I began to collect the tools I needed for those questions. in college I began to create my own narrative for history, my own guesses at how people worked and what they did, and how they explained that. so in my real education, I learned questions. my real education has taken up all the years since high school, and still goes on. I know so many more things now than I did when I graduated from high school, but I know so much less. and I have so many, many more questions. that's the education I appreciate.
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