Back to School!

I hate to admit it, but they were right. Every single one of them warned me and I poo-pooed away their concerns. “That won’t happen to me, I’ll be fine” I lied to myself. Well now here I am to give the same advice to all of you:

Do college early. Don’t wait until you have a family and other responsibilities!

The Air Force is really big on continuing education - I think senior leadership enjoys that we are seen as the “smart” branch, and they really want us to use as much of our tuition assistance as possible. Pretty much everybody higher ranked than you will encourage you to take college classes, and 1000% of them tell you the same advice I said above. “I’ll do college when I feel like it, old man” was my thought every time. But now I’m the old man, and my master’s class starts in a couple days.

And I am not excited.

I wasn’t excited when I was doing my bachelor’s either. I could have done it when I first joined the Air Force, back before I had kids I needed to take care of and a wife who I wanted to spend time with. Instead, I spent a lot of time playing video games. I’m not saying I should have played zero video games, but when you’re spending 40+ hours a week on a hobby, it’s easy to sacrifice some time to do something important. I knew that at the time, too - but I said that’s Later Noah’s problem. Turns out Back Then Noah was a jerk.

Don’t get me wrong - I’ll survive. I’ll manage to juggle work, family, and school and get through it. When it’s all said and done I’ll probably brag about how awesome I am for doing it, too. When I do, make sure to remind me that it wasn’t easy and that I should have done it sooner. And if you’re reading this thinking “yeah, okay, but I’ll do it later” - do Later You a favor and slap Right Now You in the face. Later You will thank me for it. 😁