Congrats to the many Graduates and welcome to your next step!  

It is that time of year to say Congrats to the many graduates and best wishes moving on to the next step. There are many, many people impressed and proud of your accomplishments.

This goes out as a sincere congratulations and best wishes to all those who have graduated and as you move on to the next stage, best wishes and have fun at your new endeavors. 

That is a common sentiment at this time of year as, middle school, high school, college and university students took to the Auditorium stages and many other venues to get their piece of paper, that coveted diploma. Congrats to the many graduates for your success.

Their next step will be onto their next level of education if going from high school or junior/ middle school, or they may be going on to a job or career as they have accomplished a major milestone in their life. Good for you, good for them!

The Golden Years, your fourth quarter! would you go back to school?

Have you ever wished that you had gone on to complete post-secondary education?

Here are 5 reasons to continue educating yourself ;

• mental stimulation 
• life learning can keep you involved in your community 
• you meet new and interesting people 
• it helps to keep you active in your community
• learning new skills and activities

Get the degree you always wanted with the “Congrats to the many Graduates” to go with it.

I’ve thought about going back many, many times but would I have really gone back? Yes and no?
I have to answer yes and no.

Yes because I have gone on to post-secondary education but no because the coveted education was to be a teacher and I still would like to get that.

I’ve completed three diplomas from a college-based education. Number one was in Recreation leadership management right out of high school. The second one was gerontology which is the study of old people and I took that when my kids were small. The last one was a travel consultant after having stayed home to raise kids. 

My School experience

Recreation Leadership and Management

The Recreation Leadership Management program provided tools to develop and implement leisure programs and courses. My focus was on working with mentally and physically challenged persons and developing activities that they could do in their leisure time. My experience and knowledge from this led me to my next return to higher education.

Gerontology

The next place I attended was a college where they offered a program called gerontology. This is the study of aging.

The reason I decided to take this course was that the aging baby boom generation was coming into their late fifties, early ’60s and there was a great need for activities for people who had always worked with little time to develop hobbies and interests. 

As a significant increase in the number of people living in care facilities like nursing homes, retirement residences, and assisted living apartments happened at this time, planned activities grew.

This was the start of a time of sandwich families. A sandwich family is when an adult child has children to raise but is also doing a small to a large part of the care of one or both parents.

My focus was to refine my skills in providing physical fitness programs and leisure time activities to be able to assist seniors in remaining as active as possible in whatever capacity they could manage no matter where they were living. Some lived at home and some live-in facilities. 

This was a fun demanding a return to school time when I had three little ones at home working in the field for a number of years when baby number 4 came along.

Travel Consultant

I took time off working away from home. Five years later I returned to school in the travel business. As I proceeded through this I also worked part-time in the business of travel. As I graduated the world experienced 9/11. This forever changed the travel business significantly.

I was downsized and out of the travel business soon after this. However, learning is never a loss.

There are so many intangible things to take from the experience for example now I do my own travel and my own family’s travel. All these experiences have provided me with the skills and experiences I would have missed without them.

High School Teacher

I have always wanted to be a high school teacher and indirectly I was in all these three career choices. I was teaching people different skills.

Where can you get this education?

Technology these days means you have many choices of where to get your education. 5 places are;

• There are brick and mortar schools
• You can do courses at a satellite campus
• You can do courses online
• There are non-traditional education businesses that offer degree programs
• some Seniors Centres host courses

It’s on my bucket list

Now that I am in my “fourth quarter of life” as I like to call the golden years, I have a goal to take courses as a senior and obtain that degree “just cuz”. I would like to say that I did it. 

Just as we make goals for New Years like in this blog, so we can set goals for what we want to accomplish in our golden years or fourth quarter of life.

 I’m going to look into this and check it out.  It is on my bucket list. This is also an excellent way to help retain the brain cells. 

Have you ever thought of going back to school?

I’ll get back to you on how that goes and what I find.

I hope I gave you enough encouragement and reason to consider education being added to your Fourth Quarter/Golden Years bucket list.

Join me, down the road in becoming a “Graduate” too!

Leave comments below and share your thoughts about schooling as a Fourth/Quarter Golden years person.

Looking forward to reading your comments.