Transcript
I pledge to be a lifelong learner. I stumbled upon this idea as I was entering my last year of my undergraduate career, my educational career, and I kept thinking to myself, have what I’ve learned in these past 16 plus years of formal education enough to carry me throughout the rest of my life? Will my island of knowledge forever stay this size?
This is why I decided to be a lifelong learner. Lifelong learning opens your eyes to new perspectives and makes us a more well-rounded person. Lifelong learning helps us engage in new ideas and hopefully, as a result, find a new passion in life. Lifelong learning teaches us to embrace that childlike curiosity we all once had. Lifelong learning opens our eyes to new perspectives.
Like me and five percent of this global population are terribly afraid of spiders. I mean, look at them. They come in all different shapes and sizes, and don’t get me started on those legs. So, I became so fed up one day I wanted to know their purpose on this earth. So, I decided to do a Google search, and what I learned was that they not only control our gnat and fly population on this earth, but they also protect our crops—the crops that make some of our favorite food. Imagine the world without beer and chocolate cake—a world I don’t want to be in. So, I decided to take a second and do a simple Google search, and it truly totally changed my mind about something I was unsure about, actually afraid of.
So why don’t we do this with people we meet every day? I mean, people come in all different shapes and sizes, colors, races, religions. Why don’t we take that second and do a simple Google search or even ask a polite question to figure out how they see the world, how they look at things differently than us? This would make us a more well-rounded person and, in the end, make the world a better place.
Lifelong learning teaches us to engage in new ideas and then hopefully find a new passion in life. In high school, I was able to go to multiple different camps just to figure out what I wanted to do with my life or even major in college. So, one summer, I went to veterinarian camp. It only made sense for me to be a veterinarian because I loved animals. During this camp, I learned a lot about what it takes to be a veterinarian, but also during this camp, I learned that I wasn’t cut out to be a veterinarian. Science just wasn’t my forte. But during this camp, outside of the classroom, we took hikes in the mountains, and I enjoyed my life so much. Take a city girl from Chicago and enjoying taking a hike and exploring the mountains.
I mean, that camp wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, but I did end up finding a new passion of mine and a new appreciation for nature. Let’s skip to the next summer. I went to photojournalism camp—totally different from the summer before. And at that camp, we were assigned to do an article similar to the Humans of New York, but Humans of Bloomington. This assignment pushed me out of my comfort zone. We had to go out to people in Bloomington, ask them a question, and ask them to take a picture so we could create this article. And throughout this process, I learned that I love talking to people and figuring out their stories. Also, during this camp, I learned that I do not want to sit in the computer lab and write articles or edit pictures. I knew that wasn’t my forte, but I did learn to get out of my comfort zone and figure out that I love talking to people because that article stretched me out of my comfort zone.
Let’s skip to freshman year of college. Like most freshmen, we were required to take a lot of different classes, and I decided to become a business major. I figured out there must be something for me in the business world that I can fit into. But there was just this one class—marketing principles. You could not keep my hand down in that class. I was always engaged, raising my hands, asking questions because I felt like I belonged there. I love that marketing allows us to be a little bit more creative but also a part of a team, and that’s something I felt made my heart feel full.
So, if it wasn’t for going to veterinarian camp or photojournalism camp or even taking a broad range of classes, I wouldn’t have found that passion of mine, my passion for marketing. Lifelong learning teaches us to nurture that childlike curiosity.
Let’s take kids, for example. They’re always asking questions: Why is the sky blue? Why do cars have wheels? Why can’t they eat ice cream before dinner? I mean, they have every right to ask these questions—they’re just trying to figure out how the world works around them and the way things are.
I mean, someone had to ask, why do I have to leave my house to get my favorite food? Now we have UberEats and GrubHub. Someone had to ask, why do I have to leave my home to see that movie that came out two weeks ago? Hello, Netflix and Showtime. And let’s not forget about Amazon changing the way we buy things every day. I mean, most of us use some of these apps on a daily basis because someone asked why—they questioned the way that things were.
Someone had to ask, why can’t a woman be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company? And I am so grateful and proud to be in a time where that is happening every day. So, what if we ask why now? What if we ask why today? What will our lives be like five years from now? I believe it is our responsibility to grow our island of knowledge for ourselves today, for ourselves tomorrow, for ourselves five years from now, and for generations to come. This is why I decided to be a lifelong learner. Will you?