I remember once when I was little, trying to dig a hole in the yard deep enough to stand in and look around me at ground-level. Silly and odd, I know. But I wanted to. So I started digging and soon I did have a pretty deep hole, but I was tired and my muscles had begun hurting so I went inside to get some water and relax. I was planning on going back outside to finish my project after I rested up some, but then I got side tracked by this and that… The point is, I never finished digging the little pit. This was probably the first time I fully realized that I have a bad tendency to leave a project when I get bored with it. I hadn’t started writing at that time (though I did draw a little) however, since then I’ve seen this bad habit of mine even more. The point of this is, I learned an important thing about myself through simple observation and clear-thinking. There was no school I was confined to when I learned this, nor any teacher pounding how to learn this into my head, or even any curriculum telling me
Learning Independence
I remember the first time I learned that I could control what I learned. It was a sudden burst of freedom unlike anything I had experienced. In first and second grades, my school limited the library to a small section of books that were deemed appropriate. I was bored with the selection of books. I wanted access to the rest of this seemingly huge library. On the first day of third grade, my teacher actually took us to the library. On the first day! I was elated. I thought she was the best teacher ever. And when she and the librarian told us that the library was now open to us, I think I actually cheered. Books were rare in my house. To suddenly have access to this repository was joyous. I remember checking out 3 of the toughest books I could find. I just wanted to see if I could read them. I was free. Sure, I had to do well in school. But now I could learn what I wanted, not just what the teacher taught me. I was going down the rabbit hole, and I have never looked back.
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