When I started college I had in mind that I would get college over with and get down to the real stuff, making a living. Education time would be over and I could get serious about making a living (I.E. cash flow... something we didn't have in college). As I progressed through the process to gain my Physics degree I started to see that with the gains in science I would be having to refresh my education continually.
Upon graduation I entered into the corporate world, into a job not directly related to my degree, so the lectures and lab time stopped. But you have already guessed, in order to get promotions and to keep up I was continually learning something new, or learning more thoroughly the process that I already was assigned. Later as I had employees of my own, I tried to improve the materials provided them to learn, tried to make more obvious to them the resources available. From time to time though I would still have employees approach me and say "nobody ever trained me". I would point out to them the classes that had been provided, the training meetings, and last but not least, the actual on the floor, on the job training. Unfortunately those employees usually never suceeded, they could not see the opportunity.
I say this all to say, I am seeing now more than ever that I need to be a student for a lifetime. In trying to make a small business go, I have started reading. Each book I try to put into practice, and see that it helped me get a little closer. But I always have to pick up another book and start reading and practicing. I am never completely there. At first it was hard to start reading again, but now I see what I lost in the time I wasn't reading. How much better would I have been at my other jobs if I added ongoing reading to the mix? I am reading to my kids and while they get a tremendous amount out of it, I think I get more. More opportunity to visit with them, to see how they think, to train them to think, to prepare them for life.
Be a student for a lifetime, read, practice, experiment, live.
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