Life of a scholar

All my life I was mesmerized by books...any book. Growing up my parents owned a collection of various medical and children encyclopedias. I made good use out of them (more so than my siblings). It was not uncommon to catch my nose in a book with a far away look on my young face.

Perhaps this is why college intrigued me so. As far back as I can remember I wanted to attend university. My grandest goal was to obtain a decent education. I joined the Army and receive a scholarship. Used it for my undergrad. I felt at peace, at home in academia.

When I entered grad school I could easily be found at the ISU library. The librarians were wonderful and knew me by first name. I could easily spend countless hours pouring over books and gleaning all sorts of delectable information. The life of an academic nerd. ;^)

I do miss the Ivory Tower. I wish I had followed my initial dreams of becoming a professor. Well, I had two dreams one was to become a foreign service officer and the other a professor. I enjoyed being with students and learning new things. I became quite adept at writing research papers on all sorts of subjects albeit they focused more on international politics and public administration.

Today though I work with the federal government a part of me yearns for academia....yearns to be the student....yearns to teach young minds old thoughts----and new ones.