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Show TEXTBOOK LIFE: A NONTRADITIONAL APPROACH By Bonnie Shiffler / HEX Writer My story is not original, although, like many who wander this centipedic hallway called Utah Valley University, I sometimes feel my circumstances are unique. UVU wasn't my first choice when I applied to universities. To be perfectly honest, our university wasn't a university when I first started school. I did my freshman year at Utah State University in 1994. At the time UVU was known as Utah Valley State College, and it was small enough that I didn't know it existed. But we all go through changes, and this is where both UVU and I have converged on our journey. In 2000, Dr. Janice Gygi asked the question for our university: "Where Do We Go From Here?" The college had just undertaken the task of complete restructuring, and the focus was definitely on improvement. Gygi's article addresses adaptive measures UVU could take to meet the needs of nontraditional students as well as ensuring the rigor and quality of instructional programs. This is obviously not a scientifically based report of that agenda, but thirteen years later I believe the visionaries who put UVU spinning on her axis would be pleased with the result. Maybe I'm biased. Like I said, my first year of college was 19 years ago. Though it may seem otherwise, I did get the general idea behind college: Apply. Take classes for four to five years in a specified area of study. Graduate. Get a job or get more education. Long story short, I applied to college. I went for nine years in and around having a family. Sometimes the classes I took filled requirements for my major, sometimes I took off on tangents that struck my fancy. I wouldn't recommend this course of study for anyone without unlimited financial resources, but I don't regret any of my 120+ credits in music, dance, journalism and English. I was learning. That's always been the appeal of school for me. When I decided to leave school, I spent the next ten years in the library. One of my all-time favorite film quotes is from Good Will Hunting: "You blew 150k on an education you could have gotten in $1.50 in late fees from the library." I will forever stick by the veracity of this philosophy. The problem comes in skipping everything between apply to college and get more education. I've paid my library fees. Eventually it's nice to have a scrap of paper to show for all that learning. I am sadly paperless. So here I am. And I would be disingenuous if I didn't admit that I am thanking my lucky stars for the UVU visionaries. I'd be lying if I didn't admit I feel fortunate for the opportunity to be matriculated 19 years later in a program that offers instruction from such fine professionals in an environment rich in textural student diversity. UVU may not have been my first choice, but sometimes life makes choices for you because you lack the wisdom to make them yourself. I'm not graduating this year, but, mark my words, I'm going to finish this degree. Better yet, in the last semester since my enrollment I've come to understand the personal value I place on academics and the incredible fulfillment it brings me to fill my brain to brimming, and to feel the vibration of thought, idea and facts reverberating between people. Learning is electric. Which has led me to the conclusion that I won't be concluding my education when I'm finally handed that bachelor's diploma. With 19 years behind me, UVU is just the beginning of everything that comes next. Who's to say? Perhaps I'll circle back someday and see what contributions I can make from the other side of the textbook. This is the life. I think I finally know where I'm headed. HEX / IV You Don't Have to Be Conventionally Smart to Be Educated. Jordan Freytag / HEX Writer Generally we think of people as being either educated or not, but what I've come to believe is that we all are educated in our own right. Each of us has a focal point in our intelligence related to our passions, desires, and goals in life. The artist may not understand quantum mechanics, but can create a work that provokes thought, birthing a new perspective within people. Some may not even see their own intelligence, like the ability to work well with others to accomplish tasks. I think education or intelligence isn't a measure of grade point average, or the number of books read so much as what we've picked-up throughout our lives, in or out of schools or libraries. We also think of an educated person as one who is intelligent in all subjects. But that kind of definition pushes out those who may be just a little genius' in their own specific field of interest. My father, for example, never graduated high school and made no attempt to do so, he has had a hard time keeping a steady job, and has even lived in a camper down near Utah Lake. Most people deem him to be foolish and uneducated, but he knows the terrain of the entire state—having bummed around, camping—he knows what to do in order to not only survive but to live comfortably away from the city without any kind of income. Hunting, fishing, knots: you name it, he can teach you. After living in the mountains and beside lakes, it seems he knows what the wind is saying when it blows in that harsh, excited way—or if the fish will bite, judging by the way the waves hit the shore. Our intelligence is a muscle aching to be exercised, not prejudice to any subject. To me this is education; working that muscle to its fullest extent. Whoever you are—whatever it is, work it, make it strong, and learn. Each of us is unique, and gazes through our own window out at the world, a view that no one else can describe but that individual—it's our job to describe that view, so everyone can have a better view of what the whole world really looks like. HEX /V |