That’s a cliché, yes, but within many clichés are slivers of wisdom.
School in the Bulkley Valley is starting up again.
As those bells toll pupils across the region will be getting out of the summer fun and back to learning the various curricula their teachers have been painstakingly preparing over the past few months.
We here at The Interior News wish them the absolute best in their studies — from Junior Kindergarten all the way up to students attending one of the many post-secondary institutions in the region.
However we want to remind our readers of one salient fact: learning is not just for children.
We ran a story in our August 14 edition about Virginia Hoover, a 79-year-old competitive diver from Telkwa competing in an international swimming competition held in South Korea.
Hoover said that diving had always been a dream but that growing up in post-WW2 England made it an infeasible one.
There’s a lesson in that: just because something isn’t right for you at one time, it doesn’t mean it won’t be right for you at another time.
Just because you didn’t follow the traditional school trajectory of K-12 it doesn’t mean you can’t go back now.
Just because you didn’t have the grades to get into your post-secondary program of choice, it doesn’t mean you can’t go back now and retake courses.
Just because 10 years ago you took that job on a whim and it’s been good to you, doesn’t mean you can’t leave it to pursue a new career path, should that be what you genuinely desire.
You are the designer of your own destiny and we are blessed enough to live in a region that offers a rich number of opportunities from scholarly to more trades-based educational programs.
So as students head back to school, we encourage anyone who has been putting off (or afraid to begin) their own new learning experience, whether it’s an educational one or a foray into a dreamed of pastime like Hoover, to give it a shot.
It can be scary, but we know that you can do it (and will be better for it in the future).
So to all you students — young or old — we wish you the best of luck.