We don't need no education.

"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think." -Anne Sullivan

I think this quote holds merit.  Perhaps because I am a prime example of the intended subject. College education has all but annihilated my self esteem. I think I am on the slowest track toward a degree imaginable. However, I do believe my intelligence can be argued for.

I can plan an event, write a proposal, network, communicate, speak, research, read, write, and even calculate. In fact, if there were a degree in extracurricular activities, then I'd probably have two degrees by now. I've spent a lot of time analyzing what I keep doing wrong semester after semester. I think there are two culprits. First, my inability to manage my time. I am typically ten minutes late to everything. I can spend two hours in a coffee shop and only accomplish twenty minutes of studying. I have been diagnosed with ADD and ADHD, although I highly doubt that I have either of these. The medications they urge me to consume cause me to resemble a chicken with its head cut off. I think time management, or lack thereof, plays a key role in my inability to succeed in college. I think this stems from inability to prioritize and disorganization. I am working on both of these.

The second factor is that I just don't believe I'm meant to be a scholar. I have my tool belt. I've spent so much time feeling inferior, radical, discouraged and bored because I just don't want to do it their way. I have spent hours studying sustainability, environmental politics, and people. The last is my utmost passion. I am good with people. I love people. I think all people are unique and special and fascinating. This is why I have done well in Sociology and Anthropology. Yet as I sit in a classroom, listening to what someone else learned from a book, I cannot help but think back to Ecuador, to Mexico, to Australia... I cannot help but think of this enormous planet we live in, and all of its treasures, and feel like I am wasting my time listening to those words. Their experiences are their own. I want to go experience, see, feel, touch, eat, breath, and interact with the world and the people that are mentioned in those text books. I want to discover what the author discovered for himself. Maybe, just maybe, I want to be the one to write those books.

"BUT YOU NEED A DEGREE FIRST," is what they'll say. 

That is a lie. I speak Spanish from volunteering in Mexico and Ecuador. Yet I still cannot pass a college Spanish class. I have stacks of journals, files filled with research, and educational books that I read just for the knowledge. I just cannot help but ask myself why I am in college.

So I've started to explore my options the past six months or so. I've finally been getting in touch with the servant self, the part of me that thrives off giving, and living on the edge. I picked up the stack of papers from my trip to Ecuador and began to read. Ecuador, I will admit, was extreme. Yet there in those pages is the very essence of who I am. I am not meant to be in a classroom. I am meant to go.

This blog is as much for me as it is just to put my thoughts out there. I can't help but wonder if my idealistic ambition is irrational or even level-headed? Yet there is definitely a tugging on my heart. I see another trip in my near future.

For now, it's time to process the last trip. It's time to learn from past mistakes, because when I return, I will be on a mission and this time, I am determined to accomplish my goal. Until then,
excerpts from Ecuador.