When I was in high school and it became evident that it would end someday I wondered what I would do next. For kids planning on college, there were required subjects to take, and others required just to graduate without being a dummy.

I have talked to a lot of people who say they always knew what they wanted to do. I never had that inclination or if I did, I screwed up and didn’t realize it. Life seemed an endless potpourri of choices and endless time to try a lot of them.

After high school I worked in the drug store a year and then got married. I grew up in a family where women got married, raised a family, didn’t work out of the home and never divorced. Marriage was probably the first order on my menu. I didn’t think about it enough or I would have realized I was far too immature for the big leap.

But youth is wasted on the young as they say!! I married and planned to work and maybe have children when I was 20 or so. However, that decision wasn’t meant for me to make…..and a few months after marriage I came up pregnant. I was scared silly. This was something I hadn’t decided I wanted to do and worse yet, something I couldn’t get out of.

Life rolled along and the baby came, I quit work early into the pregnancy, and was busy with all the joys of motherhood. Baby two and three came and I was still a stay-at-home mom. That was certainly more gratifying to me than a career would have been…..and just because you haven’t had higher education doesn’t mean the learning stops. Reading books, taking advantage of the Internet and a zillion other resources can feed your hunger to learn.

Back to choices…….I never really made many on my own. They found me. I have had several good jobs since the children were in school and they all happened because someone knew me. It seemed I was “picked” for the jobs I agreed to because someone found me to be dependable, honest, hard working, a good communicator, pleasant, neat in appearance and so on.

I am not one to discredit higher education but I have known too many people who were given the privilege of a college education who partied, skipped classes, lied, cheated…..well, sadly the list is long. But being all of the attributes I mentioned about myself wouldn’t get a rocket to the moon, become a brain surgeon, teacher, or any other professional, either.

I am saying it seems to me the best candidate for a serious job would be the college grad who was honest, dependable, hard working….could read and write…..also speak intelligently and be an asset to any organization. Jay Leno does a sidewalk interview on a routine basis where he asks some very fundamental questions. Things a kid should know in the lower grades……and most of the answers are unbelievably stupid.

Sadly, education is lacking to the extent that people who give wrong answers don’t care, aren’t embarrassed about it and laugh about their incompetence. It’s funny. NO! It’s SAD! I do not know how teachers can teach when parents don’t care and show no interest or concern over their children’s education. Many teachers are good caring people who obviously care more about education than the kids or their parents.

Of course, I’m speaking to the low achievers and not to the whole. I know there are still kids out there who excel in their subjects, have great morals and embrace education as the gateway to a better life. The “not caring” about “not knowing” is what is so hard to deal with. How can a young person not care about his own future?

OK……I know a lot of my readers are more educated than I am so I’m opening a forum and asking you to come up with some solutions here. I think I hear school bells ringing and we’ve got to work fast. There is so much wonderful information to be digested it’s a pity to starve at an early age. Let’s show a little pride here and wake up. Picture Abraham Lincoln walking miles to borrow books and reading by fire light…….how long has it been since you’ve felt the urge to read and learn like that?

I open windows to see out,
I open doors to go out,
I open books to FIND out.

Until tomorrow,
Essentially Esther