The Ignition

More often than not school does not have a positive connotation. Honestly I can say for the most part it does not in my book either. It is an environment that in my eyes, did not seem like anything that would be helpful for me later on. That is until I found a job that piqued my interest even more in the business world.

I’ve always been interested in the business field. I was actually planning on attending cosmetology school in June, and opening my own salon shortly after I graduated. So because of this, I took business classes like Business Management, Word Processing, and Accounting to help for the future. Working throughout those classes was not bad, but it was the, “filling of the pail” as W.B. Yeats once mentioned. It was just something to do that I was partially interested in, but even then it was not educational stuff that I was genuinely going to use in the future. It was just something to complete and move on. Sure I saw the invoices, registers, and purchase orders that I dealt with in Business Management, but I couldn’t see the door for my future opening up. I didn’t see the worksheets in Accounting leading me to a career.

I am the type of person who likes to plan ahead. I like to be organized and have a direction in life. Bottom line was I needed a job either way. I needed to pay for cosmetology school or find a career I wanted to stay in.

Luckily, I was hired as an office assistant, doing the office tasks that I have always been drawn to. It was at that point that the drive and desire to learn became apparent. That door to my future had finally opened. I realized that those purchase orders I once looked at helped to familiarize me at my new job. That the posting procedures that annoyed me, were actually the same concepts I would be following in my career.

Going between work and school introduced me to an open mind. Since I’ve been working I have noticed that I am more open and willing to learn in my Accounting II class. My willingness has increased, as well as my focus to try and see where I can apply this information in my job. The desire to learn was ignited. It took awhile for me to get that fire started, but there was always a small flame lurking. The difference between beforehand and now was I had no real, genuine purpose behind my classes; I was just filling my bucket of requirements to graduate. Now that I’ve realized that I can apply knowledge from classes, that small flame has now become a fire.

W.B. Yeats’ poem easily relates to my situation because education is not one of those things where everyone is immediately interested and involved in. This is why is poem he refers to the fact that education is “not the filling of a pail” or in other words, a simple task to meet and be done. It is instead something that might take time, and effort, and just the right amount of spark in order to develop an interest to pursue. Using the idea of a flame and fire works perfectly to describe learning because it might take awhile for a student to realize what sparks their interest and lights that inner drive. Take me for example, I knew that I wanted something in the business field, so that slight flame was there. But it wasn’t until I got my job that the spark became a fire where I pushed to learn more and absorb as much as possible.

Education is a tough situation these days. It is a hard atmosphere to try and progress and thrive with one’s interests. Everyone is so unique and diverse, yet the education system is still trying to make everything vague and clear cut for everyone. That is where people don’t see that learning is not a clear cut area where it is completely black and white, but rather an area with many different colors with room for growth. Learning is a fire, it just needs to be ignited.

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