My Education

In the last 7 years of travel and many self inflicted fresh starts  I have bravely/foolishly found myself in place's I know little about.   I thought  a preface of history  may somehow inhibit me from a fresh experience.  Somehow the history would come to me if I just threw myself knee deep into the culture.   I felt strongly about going in blind and come back knowing just what I saw. I had a distaste for history books and used literature as if it was fact.  Personal stories held more truth to me and I thought if I went out and met people this would be education enough. 

  My distaste for  history books was a natural result of a hatred for public education,just as much as my restlessness that led to these travels were.  I try to put aside a bitterness that I was never in a class that made me interested in history and that it was never discussed in a real way.  Now I wished I had known more about the war in Croatia  that kept me from wondering off the path that led me to the beach because their may be land mines left over from a war that had ended 10 years before.  I walked through history to sun bathe. I wish I knew more about Ataturk before going to Istanbul where their are more pictures and statues of this man then there are trees. 

This past winter I began to look into volunteer work abroad for the summer,  I was willing to pay and do grunt work and put my love of travel into use.  Of course this would also further my education in the world but everything I applied toward rejected me for my lack of education.  Of course this is bullshit,but I began to understand that these are institutions and they where built with college students in mind.  Students who may have a sense of history and will be able to use this on their resumes. 

I  began to think about how literature had guided me to my travels and how I  wished to study literature further.  Literature and film opened me up to an interest in the culture behind the art and that lead me to traveling.  

As I prepare to go back to school,  I have to hold my breath, and put aside my restless tendencies  and not resist the order of a classroom so I can continue a education that began in chaos.