College graduation, lifelong learning, and the internet

Originally posted: Sunday, March 12, 2006

The other day I was walking across campus here at Brigham Young University (BYU) and started reflecting upon my last 5 years here. Time has gone fast as I've run track & field, and earned my bachelors/masters degree in information systems. I don't think it's really hit me that I'm almost finished with my formal education (I'm not sure that it really will since I have a track meet during graduation ceremonies). Five years. Wow, that's half a decade. But what have I really learned during that time? I feel like I can tell you a lot of disjointed facts from a multitude of topics, but as for laying out my acquired knowledge in a cohesive and well thought-out manner would be difficult. Yet, I know that I've learned volumes of important and applicable knowledge. My educational reflections seem contradictive in many ways.

My last year here has been stretched out so that I could finish my sports eligibility. I've taken up a minor in Scandinavian Studies and have only participated in a couple of information systems courses. I think this wandering educational focus has added to my loss of direction and academic purpose. I feel like the times when I was learning the most and when I was sure of my academic direction was when I was being challenged, pushed to my mental limits. I did have some tough classes/semesters (like the IS core my junior year). The information systems program here encourages us to be self-motivated learners. This is where I feel I've accomplished the most and received the most satisfaction. The internet has been an incredible tool to me. With a little research (and some factual filtering) you can educate yourself about nearly anything. What an amazing tool.

I come from an agricultural area of central Washington state in the United States. Our local Public Utility District (PUD), the Grant County PUD, has installed a fiber optic network called Zipp. It brings fiber to every power meter in the county. What an amazing opportunity this is! Some outdated, incompetent, sticks-in-the-mud have criticized the costs of such a system, but little do they know. The business, technological, educational, etc. opportunities of high-speed internet are explosive. Never did I realize the role the internet would play in my life when I first experienced it in 1996 on a Netscape browser, 28.8 Kbps modem, and images disabled (to make things bearable). Never in my wildest dreams did I comprehend the doors the internet could open to areas like central Washington. I left the U.S. to spend two years in Denmark and when I got returned -- bang -- the world was forever changed by the internet.

So, even though I find it hard to come to grasps with everything that I've learned over the past 5 years, I know that I've been taught one thing -- one very important thing -- and that is to learn. I've been taught both "how" to learn and been instilled with the "desire" to learn. I guess my mother was one of the biggest influences in my life, especially in regards to this. She realized the power of knowledge and education. Besides being a wonderful mother, she was a tutor/teacher. Later she became a World Book encyclopedia saleslady (one of their best). Often, when we went to her with questions her reply would be, "go look it up," and off to the encyclopedias we went. I realized that knowledge was always out there, we just had to find where it was located, and for that I am eternally indebted to her.

It is for this reason that the internet has been so life changing. It is a place where knowledge can be collected, cataloged, and analyzed. Did my 19th century ancestors living on Danish farms ever think that such a tool would be developed? They probably had a simple hope to receive an education in arithmetic, spelling, reading, writing, etc. Wow, we have so much to be grateful for.

Well, this ends far from where I began but I guess that it how much of my thought pattern (and internet browsing) goes (thank goodness for Mozilla Firefox tabbed browsing). Hope my writing has maybe inspired you to also make a habit of lifelong learning.