Thoughts on improvement

When I consider the extent of atrophy that occurs with stagnation it astounds me that we as people feel content to remain idle when there are many things to learn and experience. On a personal note, I've discovered that I myself have declined in my readiness of mind and gumption to expand my experiences. I discovered a bit ago that I was not improving my mind nor my intellect due to the fact that I was extending myself to such an extent during the day that at night I was exhausted. I have found myself sitting in idleness and stagnation "relaxing" to a point that once the kids were in bed I did absolutely nothing until I myself went to bed. Upon realizing this I've decided to put myself on a sort of crusade to aquire knowledge and learning to the benfit of myself, my family and those around me. I read a blog today that said "As much as we'd like to pack our admissions forms with extra-curriculars, they're not going to mean squat if we're not taking challenging classes and scoring well on tests. " I agree and yet disagree with this statement, realizing this quote was taken out of context, it started me on a track of thinking of what I considered education and improvement of myself. I suppose in reading this comment, the comment correlated with what I had been thinking on previously, that of improving myself. Being homeschooled I discovered when I went to college how much I missed in high school. I've also recognized how I feel, now after finishing college and going on with my life, having a family, what I want for my children. I've started thinking how I want them to be educated and what opportunities I want them to have. At the University I realized that I had done the opposite of what the blog said in high school. I studied on the core subjects and the classes and didn't experience the "extra curricular" things. I believe by being homeschooled and by doing that, I failed to expose myself to areas that I would have not only enjoyed but excelled in. Realizing that it was failure to expose myself to the "extra curricular" I failed to realize the potential that I could have reached had I been exposed to different fields or interests. I believe in participating in the extra curricular classes and mandatory subjects you increase your range of experience enabling yourself to then pursue a wider field of interest. This tought process is similar to the idea of pre-requisites and generals in college. A student is asked to take generals in order to provide him/her with a wider field of experience so that the student is exposed to areas that he/she might be interested and in which he can excell. It is similar to pre-requisites in that you need a basic knowledge of certain subjects to explore them further. Thus the basic aquirements of experience in high school for further exploration later in life. The reason why the quote from that blog spurred my thinking to such an extent was the thought processes I had already been going through were encouraged or rather incited by the comment. I've been debating putting my 3 year old daughter in extra curricular classes for the past few months. I would like to provide her with experiences that will enable to her either pursue the added fields of experience or to know about them, get a taste for them and lay them by the way side. I want to provide her with option of doing or not doing. I realized when I reached college that I did not have the appropriate expereince nor the expertise that I needed in order to pursue my interests to the extent desired. I figure that if I can provide my daughter with the training, starting early, she will have the basic knowledge and/or expertise needed to pursue anything she wants to. Or if she so chooses make an informed decision as to what she does not want to do. My daughter, Megan, loves to dance and sing, draw and sculpt. She also loves learning. I want to encourage this by allowing her to have training in those things. On a different tangent here are the options I've been tossing around for Megan. There is an option of a preschool 2 days a week where she will have organized play, reading, arts and crafts and socialization. There is also a Tiny Dancers class I am looking at. In the fall I am going to enroll her in a Montessori program... I think. Saying goodbye to my babies is a struggle that I think I will need to overcome. These classes will help her in her interaction with other children and the art of following directions, regardless of what she learns. As for my own pursuits, I've decided to not only reread my 18th century literature (a favorite of mine) I plan on reading through some of the classics that I enjoyed and was exposed to in my humanities courses in college. I've decided to read through my Greek poetry, Milton, Wordworth (my favorite poet), as well as others. I've considered reading Don Quijote as well as rereading Virgil. I'm also going to make a concerted effort to reaquire my skills in Spanish and the progress to a different language. I believe I might try French, German or try Hindi or Cambodian. I've read a couple of ethnologies on Cambodia and India. Those areas facinate me. We'll see. Time for bed.