School is never out for the professional

Some twenty five years ago or so, I spoke for a class at Notre Dame and I said, “Ten years from now, everything you learned here will be obsolete.” I wasn’t the first one to figure that one out. “Then in time I heard others say, “Five years from now, everything you learned here will be obsolete.” Then time passed and now commencement speakers sometimes say, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everything that you have learned is now obsolete.”

During my career I figured that I always had the edge because I did not learn much of anything in any school. I was the class clown in High School at a Jesuit institution and there wasn’t much call for class clowns at that time. Somehow I graduated from high school. I claim they gave me a conditional diplomat. They gave it to me on condition that I not tell anyone where I got it. I went to night school for two nights to learn the typewriter keyboard. I signed up for the Kelly Speed writing course and attended two sessions. I learned enough in each experience to qualify for promotions. I took a one week course on video production at Indiana U. and before the week was over I had five great job offers from other attendees. I kept my old job and turned it into a wonderful job doing what I loved to do.
I took a Christopher Leadership Course taught by a dedicated Dale Carnegie Instructor. It helped.
I discovered a very worn record of Earl Nightingale’s message The Strangest Secret and it led to a learning program where I listened to cassette tapes of masters in sales, psychology, creative thinking and much, much more. I learned that if I listened to a message again and again that I absorbed and understood more and more as I advanced. After several years I took a course at a local Community on overcoming the fear of computers. I was too slow to comprehend much of anything and finished the class with just as much fear of computers as I started out with. For this they mailed me one college credit hour. It is the only one I have so far.

I have had the honor of sharing the platform with many of our greatest speakers. I have learned so much from men like Wayne Dyer, Zig Ziglar, Marilyn VanDerbur, yes, Earl Nightingdale the fellow who started me thinking and years later I had the honor of sharing a platform with him. I think that I have learned something from every other speaker that I have shared a platform with. I still buy and absorb new information and when I discovered the website TED.com it took my breath away I was so excited by such a free platform for learning. That is why I have been offering those AHA opportunities for you to learn. Interesting though, not one reader has even acknowledged the fact that they have noticed this new feature. Well, below is another opportunity to check the site out and maybe latch onto a speaker and a concept that will have a deep, lasting impact on your future…but, just maybe you won’t even notice that it is there.