Gray's Academy

As a student did you stay up all night before a big test or major paper was due? Or did you make sure you didn’t have the anxiety of cramming it all in by pulling an all nighter?

I have lived long enough and made it through enough muck on wits alone to say I don’t want to cram for a test. Sometimes there is no choice and life doesn’t give you any warning. It is pure on the job training. When I am in a more formal learning environment I always study ahead. See if you can find anyone besides me who bought their nursing textbooks in the early summer for the pure joy of reading them in the weeks before the semester began.

So I am asking myself, why aren’t I studying Italian before I head to Sicily for language immersion? It took me about 2 minutes to come to the conclusion that I want to go into this with innocence and see what it will be like to immerse myself in something new and different. I could have crammed in some on-line language lessons. I didn’t. I decided that I will be there as a beginner and save my cramming for times when I have no choice but to figure out what the heck I am supposed to do.

When we reach the last third or fourth quarter of our lives, we are blessed with the wisdom that has comes from our experiences. We also have to look deeper to find the child-like wonder of discovering something new. This is why I am leaving my deep studying of Italian until I get to Italy. And, I get to do that with the benefit of all of my experiences traveling the world with Larry. But I am also winging it – so I really am cramming for this test.

It’s time to see what happens during my adventure in Sicily. I am ready to expand myself outside of my small apartment in a corner of Sicily that will be my home for the month of September 2023 – the year I took my bruised heart on a solo adventure in Sicily.