I'm a learning junkie. I'm always fascinated by new "things" : toys, technologies, tunes, trivia, etc. That's probably why it took me 11 years to finish my undergraduate degree. That, and I kept changing majors. Telltale sign of a learning junkie - I couldn't decide what I really wanted to focus on in my college days. In reality, the reason I finished my degree in Computer Science was because that was the degree plan I could finish quickest. I could have stuck it out in Physics, or Electronics Technology, or Music Composition if I had wanted, but I had a real incentive to finish: my wife was graduating, and my younger brother already had his Master's degree under his belt. I suppose if I didn't really have to get into the "real world," I would have stuck around a little longer and added to my 200+ college hours before graduating.

In the 6 years since I finished my degree, I've often thought about getting my Master's degree, but I've always been plagued by the key question: what field of study? I started work on a Master's in Computer Education and Cognitive Systems (a 4.0 average, I might add), but then the big job shuffle started, and it became impractical for me to keep going down that road. I've taken a serious look at a distance education graduate degree in Astronomy from a University in Australia, which would be really cool since I've never studied the southern sky. I've looked at a number of education programs, including several distance education degrees. However, each time I zero in on a program of study, the next big question comes up: what do you do with the degree once you've got it?

When I started college, I had a plan to go straight through and get my Ph.D. in Physics before I turned 30. Needless to say, that plan didn't work out exactly that way. I still would like to have my terminal degree, if for no other reason than to be "Dr. Neale," which I think has a really nice ring to it! To paraphrase a rather famous movie line, "What would you do with a Ph.D. if you had one?" (I'll avoid a number of apparent academia jokes that could easily be inserted here.)

Are my desires truly altruistic ones? Am I truly interested in education for education's sake? The more I ponder these questions, the more I come to think that may indeed be the case. I've always enjoyed the education process (with the exception of exams, homework, quizzes, essays, labwork... hmmmm... maybe this is the real reason I haven't jumped back into grad school...) and love learning new ideas and concepts. I can get sidetracked occasionally, or perhaps frequently, when I delve into some learning challenges. Once, a long time ago, when I was really struggling with memorizing my German vocabulary, I decided to write a quick program for my PC to quiz me on vocabulary (I couldn't afford to skip a few meals of Ramen noodles to buy flash cards or anything else to help me learn words). So I spent several days putting together the system that would be my salvation in passing German III. At the end of the semester, I had a much better understanding of user interface design concepts and database implementations than my Wortschatz. The same thing happened when I started working on this blog. Even though my goal was to exercise my creative writing, I spent far more hours learning CSS style sheets and blog template design than I did my wordsmithing.

Anyway, I struggle again with the question of how to educate myself in the short-term. Given my current employment situation (none), I am considering completing a few certification exams, which would lead me to study my chosen career craft in a focused direction for the next several weeks. I could also use this time to seriously focus on my writing by enrolling in a creative writing course. Once I resume gainful employment, however, I am still tempted to further my graduate studies, but not knowing where I'll be working (or living, for that matter), I'm hesitant to even research options outside of an entirely on-line program.

So in the meantime, I'll continue as I have been the last two months - taking one day at a time and seeing what I can learn from each day that presents itself to me. I continue to keep my mind open to all possible sources for the most important education of all: life lessons.