Education not Ignorance

Blog

  • On becoming a better person

    Education has taken me across the world, not just in books but in real life too. Just before covid hit I was in Morocco studying Arabic. I was living and breathing everything about it, I was finally with my people and it felt good. On top of France and Bosnia, Morocco was equally life changing. But then covid hit, and all the expats had to return to leave. I’m not sure any of my colleagues made it through the pandemic on the Mediterranean.

    Recently I am approaching my education in a bit of a different way. I think I am officially done with my studies, but I have also started a new habit. Strength training. Friends, it’s delicious.

    It’s not new in my life, I grew up with my mother going to the gym on the weekends. But her veneration was only interested in lifting light weight for a high number of reps. My generation on the other hand… have you heard of muscle mommies?? I digress. Thankfully I’ve found a women-owned gym with kick ass personal trainers in Victoria.

    Snatch grip! Something I really want to learn.

    I really like this place. Granted they mostly gear themselves to people over 40 years old, but I still fit in. In fact, I’m grateful that there’s not a lot of content creators hogging the squat rack with their phones up on stands everywhere. Two reasons… why? And also have you noticed that they’re all beautiful? Now I do okay, but I still get transported back to high school with the mean girls who were all gorgeous whenever I see someone who looks like them. And I know that I’m judging people based on how they look (not cool), but there’s always a hot second where I feel inadequate next to a beautiful woman. Ande that’s totally on me.

    Thankfully, based on my time in Morocco I’ve become much more a girl’s girl. This is based on the cultural shift I noticed in Tetouan. Women seemed to seek out other women, and they were all friendly. Like we would all congregate together on a train or in a bus and there would be like a sisterhood. It was nice, but it was weird. I think I have a bit of homegrown misogyny deep in my psyche because these new experiences took a bit of time to get used to. But now? After coming back? I’m shifted to a girl’s girl. I would rather spend time with them than the guys. I’m more supportive, less competitive. I understand that lifting someone else up doesn’t necessarily mean that your own self goes down. And I’m loving it.

    So, I’m building muscle and learning how to do hard things. Over and over again. I can feel my own self reliance growing. Makes sense because I can now squat my body weight! There’s something really fulfilling about coming out of a deep squat, with your own weight balanced on my back, that makes you feel like you can do anything. And I will. Next up is deadlifting 2x my body weight and I’m well on my way.

  • Regrets

    One of the things I wish I was either smarter in or did better in school is science. My experience with public school was especially unpleasant and it wasn’t really until I was in my mid twenties that I finally figured out that I like to study/learn and how to do it well in an academic environment. Which, on one hand I’m glad about, that I finally came around to an aspect of my life that I always wanted to pursue. But on the other hand I’m sad that it took so long for me to come around to how I learn.

    Childhood disappointments started here.

    I remember back in the 6th grade when I brought home my first “D” on the report card. I knew it was going to be a big thing and guess what subject it was in? 6th grade science. I think it was biology. I can’t remember a lot about how my parents reacted, but I can remember my mother getting really serious saying that I’m going to need to really study because getting a “D” was unacceptable. Now looking back, I would totally approach that situation differently, but hindsight is 20/20.

    Unfortunately, that hate/hate relationship with science only continued throughout high school. I was a solid “B” student with a couple “A”s sprinkled in, but they were always in PE or Band. But honestly it wasn’t really a hate/hate relationship. I wanted to like science! It was so cool. Biology, chemistry, or physics. It wasn’t like I wanted to do poorly in school, but I didn’t know how to learn and what makes me even more mad is that my mother and father didn’t really help out. If I recall correctly, I always had a hard time understanding the parts of science that were outside my grasp. Or maybe outside my scope, like we weren’t talking about dark matter, but we would be talking about gravity. Essentially it felt like they weren’t giving up all the information we needed to actually learn the concepts that we were studying. And for some reason, I did not delve into the subject matter on my own time, something that I would really would like to do now.

    So, imagine my chagrin whenever I meet a scientist in my adult life, and I want to learn more about their work and my knowledge limits me. For example, I had the unique opportunity to talk with the owner of Affinity Immuno, on what they do and their “why”. Essentially, Jon (the one I spoke with) wanted to make an impact on other humans in a positive sense, and science was the only way he knows how. Affinity makes biologicals, which is something I learned about then and it’s essentially stuff like monoclonal antibodies, antibody labeling, and hgh kits. Why would you need this stuff? If you were in a lab and were working on cancer prevention or cures you would need monoclonal antibodies or hgh kits.

    Apparently monoclonal antibodies are a major creation that happened within the past 50 years. Ya’ll know about chemo right? And how sick it can make a person. But these antibodies are created specifically with your geno in mind and are advanced targeting for cancer cells. They also work on autoimmune diseases.

    So when talking to Jon, I realized that I knew the words that he was saying, but I had to ask him to explain it like I was five years old in order to understand it. That interaction makes me think that I rally wish I would have done better in school as a youngster and then became I scientist. Oh well, it seems like life sometimes deals out regrets whether you like it or not.

  • The Hardest Education

    There have been many experiences in my life where I feel like I’ve gotten an education. Obviously in University and then in my Master’s degree. But also outside of the ivory tower. Forexample in the four years between high school and college I joined a no defunct NGO and travel the world providing free conversational English classes for students.

    This was an awesome choice by me, even though my parents were less then enthuised…but if they were not going to support me then they also couldn’t tell me what to do. At least that was my twenty year-old reasoning. So off I went to France, Thailand, China and Bosnia. Picture this a small-town girl from the Prairies at the tender age of eighteen traveling and living in France THEN in Thailand. Then more travels, such privilege and honor. That was an education and one I’m not likely to forget.

    But there was a period of time after my studies that I was not expecting to be so hard. And that was parenthood. Which for me was unexpected because by that time I was a bit older, accomplished and overall a independent person. But parenthood slapped me upside the face and sat my arrogant ass down and gave me (and is still giving me!) lesson after lesson.

    I think it first starts off the restructuring of your brain while you’re pregnant. Pregnant brains literally shrink. So quickly after conception I felt like I became dumb. And luckily that continued until birth and afterward /s

    I really should have known that caring for a newborn was going to suck, but nowhere on my radar was there any information about it. Hollywood let me down. Netflix too. Newborns are trickly because they’ll all over the place. But some of them can my like mine was, and absolutely refused to be put down and also mine is/was extremely sensitive. Needless to say there was no chill at all at home with a newborn. Which was unexpected.

    I should have looked into postpartum care more, or even childbirth classes like this site offers. I was completely over my head and it was not a fun time. Coupled with the fact that overnight I became a primary caregiver to an extremely small human. I was not prepared. Even three years later it finally seems like I’m coming out of a haze and still don’t have my feet solidly on the ground.

    But yeah, during that time I was no good for exact names/dates/etc. but I could tell you exactly how many bowel movements my little one had and their consistency. Even now I can exactly recall how my lo slept and ate. But specific words in specific circumstances? Nope.

    So dear readers, if you want to have a baby for god’s sake get educated about the process. Find a childbirth education class, better yet get yourself a birth and postpartum doula. You’ll thank me later.

  • I’m so excited.

    Hello everyone! My name is Kaitlyn Lauren Collins and this blog will be about my experience at College and beyond!

    I was super stoked to be beginning my studies when I did.  I’ve had a bit of a different life than most folks, much to my parents chagrin I did not attend college right out of high school. Trust me my mother was pissed when she realized that I am not college bound.

    And you know what really sucked? They completely pulled all sort of support from me. Are they going to help me pay for things? Nope. Fine I said. I’ve been working ever since I was 14.5 years old, mainly because my parents don’t have a lot of money, which is okay. But mainly too because I was really involved in sports in high school and I absolutely needed new shoes for every season. Do you know the price of basketball shoes now? You absolutely cannot get a good pair with out going over 145$ maybe a bit less if you can find some on sale… but I digress. I started working in a print shop doing Bindery the year I turned 14. I mostly made sure that the materials were properly assembled and ready for distribution. It was mind-numbingly boring, and it paid only minimum wage. But I was able to get the shoes for basketball and the tennis racket that I wanted that fall.

    At the beginning of my senior year I told my parents that I wasn’t going to college. Which should not have been that much of a surprise, I was not that good of a student. They flipped. My dad told me that when/if I ever were to go to school that he would not pay for it…I was like that was on the table?? I did not expect help from them for school at all.

    Anyways, since they were not behind my plans, I needed to get a job stat. I decided to forgo the last season of track and field, and I got a job at McDonalds. I was thrilled. The pay was slightly better than the print shop I started at, but by 17 I was used to working albeit in the summertime. So, I got right to work and for more than half the school year I worked at Micky Dees to pay for my plans after graduation.

    Long story short I took off four years after my graduating high school to go to college. And let me tell you, I’m so glad that I did. I feel like at age 17/18 I was still a child but by 22? I knew what I wanted to do and then I went out and did it. Also, the parental support being taken away was pivotal, because I know now that I can do what I set my mind to. I’ll give you a spoiler… after my initial studies I was accepted into Harvard for my masters. So, take heart if you are a young person and you want to put off higher education, you can still go back and succeed.