How do you define a blue sky experience? Is it some place over yonder? Is it a person? I see it as a moment. Just one moment.
Even in a business like mine where you work hard to get people engaged, I always take a step back and consider those who claim they have no time, shrink back in fear or laugh off the thought of what a blue sky experience might mean. I guess you can't escape all of the things that get in the way of blue skies.
Since we began our partnership with Take Time for Your Life, it has become very clear about what's at stake. Think of the premise of the words "take time for your life." The urgency is great here, we actually are in the business of helping people put their life first. Not their career, not a degree, but their life. A life that includes career, education and more.
So the blue sky experience requires you to put your life first. It requires you to understand that you only have so many times to see it feel it, embrace it. It requires you to understand that the blue sky experience was given to you as a gift of sorts. A wonderful gift.
I am an experiential writer and guide, so you need to know that I'm not just poking around here. The picture in this post was taken in a moment today. A moment I almost passed up because I thought I had so much work to finish, and I did. But I turned around. About an hour after I took the shot, I had to remind my mom that theattorney needed my dad's death certificate to finish her estate plans. Admittedly, my blues increased substantially.
Enjoy your blue skies when you see them.
A survey conducted by the Education Ministry five years ago found more than 80% of students disliked school. Dropout rates have been rising in rural areas—partly for economic reasons but also because of the stultifying atmosphere of their classrooms. Exam pressures frequently lead to suicides. According to a survey last year among senior secondary-school students and university freshmen in one area, more than 50% had considered killing themselves.
Throughout the millennia, students of all ages in China have had to endure the miseries of learning by rote. Teachers have stifled creativity in the pursuit of the accumulation of facts, and parents have forced children to spend mind-numbing hours cramming for exams. But for the past year, the government has been experimenting with what could amount to revolutionary changes in China’s classrooms. The aim is to make education more pleasant, more useful and, above all, to challenge students to think for themselves.