Education

School has started in this area. Colleges started on Monday, and public schools started last week on Wednesday. Over the past couple of weeks, we've had a great turnout of visits at Rivercrest from all sorts of schools. I'm considering attending university next term, if I can get a least a little bit of money towards it and establish residency for long enough (I have no proof that I've been living in Nebraska for over a year now, but now that I have a car and will be changing my driver's license soon, that should change). But even though I can't attend school this term, I am by no means stopping education.

-My job is education. Although I'm not called an "intern" anymore, I feel as though I've been learning a lot more so far this year than I did last year. Although I probably have the most experience writing, publishing, and designing at camp, this job is a whole different scenario from what I've done in the past and I continue to learn from it constantly. For example, even though I've been using Microsoft Word for years, I'm still learning all sorts of formatting things to make papers look better. (There's really no need to get different programs for brochures, newsletters, or booklets; Word has the ability to do it all if you know how to use it.) Same thing goes for website design. And I'll soon have to learn about how to transfer old-fashioned photo slides and video tapes to digital material. (An interesting part of my job is that I am somehow the camp historian, since I'll be archiving over 50 years of media. I don't mind since I've enjoyed finding random facts about the camp for the past several months, but I kind of feel unqualified since Eli actually majored in history and doesn't do any history-related work! Then again, Emily majored in English, but I do all the editing. Hmm...) An interesting and unexpected form of on-the-job education is the challenge of support raising. It's a lot more difficult than I expected, but I enrolled in an informal online course from raising-support.com. Their articles are giving me advice on how to write support letters and what to do once I get sponsors. Coincidentally, the course is also helping me with writing and editing for the camp newsletter and elsewhere with my writing.

-I do continuing education for EMS. EMT licenses last for about two years. In order to renew them, you have to show that you have a certain amount of continuing education hours. Jon, Mike, Eli, Jeff and I got some of our continuing education hours yesterday when Dr. J offered us a class right here at camp! (One other person attended the class, and both he and Dr. J liked seeing the camp, so we might have more events like this in the future!) Our class was "Taking Safety to the Streets", which was a lot of practical information that we didn't cover too in-depth in our EMT class. I'll have to take several more classes over the next year and a half in order to renew my license.

-In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn. That last sentence is a cheesy quote from a cheesy song in the movie Tarzan, but it's true. After taking yesterday's class, I have the option to apply to become an instructor for that class. I'm still considering it, since there is an application fee above the cost of the class to do it and I'm not sure who I would be able to teach the information to. But there are other ways to teach. A couple days ago, I found out about a group home for children in crisis situations, right here in Fremont. I've been looking for a place like this in the area for a long time, and now that I have a car, I have the ability to volunteer there! I haven't heard back from the volunteer coordinator, but I really hope I can move forward with helping at the group home with tutoring and mentoring. (And possibly even organizing a day trip to Camp Rivercrest. Aw yeah, networking!) I took Emily to the Solmens last night for dinner (my first drive for recreation), and we ended up staying until after midnight to play games. One game we played was "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" I ended up being the cheat several times for other people, and I answered all my questions correctly without using any of my cheats. (I did, however, have a complete brain fart when asked the million dollar question; everyone else remembered, but, unfortunately, no cheats are allowed for the million dollar questions. FYI: External fertilization of fish is called spawning.) Emily was good at the game as well. (Intellectually, we're pretty similar. You know, those wordsmiths that did really well in high school.) We got to talking, and before we left that night, I think that family just gained two new homeschool teachers.

-I learn on my own. I couldn't stop learning no matter what; it's just too interesting! Whether it's random research, reading books, or attending seminars, I love taking advantage of these opportunities to learn new things. One subject I've been focusing on lately is orphan care. Jenn, who worked here this summer, knows about this and recently sent me lot of materials from a conference she attended with her new job. One thing I've noticed is that so many ministries are focused primarily on international orphan care, but these same needs in America and other first-world nations are ignored more often than not. It might be because society has made the problem invisible, making it politically incorrect to call a child an "orphan" or a home an "orphanage", thus lessening the sting of what's really going on. I've been feeling a little conflicted for the past couple of months, since I want to both continue doing camp work but also have dreams of starting an orphan ministry, but with this new information, I think it would be awesome to one day do camps for foster/crisis children (known as America's "orphans"), fatherless or single-parent children, kids who have experienced abuse, and/or adopted children.

I received my associate's degree before leaving Oregon, and obtained my EMT certification here. Maybe someday I'll get a bachelor's degree (I'm thinking in either Communications or Nonprofit Administration) so that I'll have a piece of paper to prove that I learned things. But until that time, I'll continue to learn more things, many of which couldn't be learned in a classroom.