Learning Fresh

I completed a presentation for my course tonight and I fee the dual sense of "relief" on the one hand and "more to go" on the other.I think this is the whole point of taking courses after all: not to get a degree per se, but to actually learn something. Certainly one thing I am learning throughout the semester is that there is always something that can be improved through my observation of the other presenters. How I interpret or understand the assignment will be different from someone else, so you end up having this rich plethora of presentations to choose from. In a way, this is exactly how it should be, because it takes me out of the stereotype of the student as some kind of isolated being. In fact, most of my learning experiences have been social ones, meaning that I get these unexpected moments of inspiration from others, and it completes parts of my journey.
  Does this mean that I am only "copying" the ideas of others? Hardly: I think that it's like the metaphor of a cow eating grass. Eating grass does not turn a cow into grass, but what the cow has to do with the grass is absorb it and make it its own. Under the same token, learners also find ways to make the information they acquire from others uniquely their own, creating something new in the process. One thing that impressed me the most about the presenters was how richly and seamlessly they incorporated so many of the readings into one subject area. I think that this aspect impressed me a great deal.
   Learning is a never ending thing, and I hope I never get tired of this kind of learning. It's certainly what keeps people young!