I believe their is a lot to be learned from this essay. It starts off with the quote “The light bulb may appear over your head, but it may be a while before it actually goes on.” Throughout this reading Conroy gives many in depth past experiences that go to support this quote. The first experience was when he was just a young boy working at a hot dog stand. In his free time he would go visit these two black men who shined shoes for a living. He took note on how they never looked at anything that was in their immediate vicinity leading him to believe they could see though walls. The young lad soon left for a better job and played jazz with various black musicians. Not until then did he realize why they men always stared off. He found that the did this because they were trying to get themselves through life in the dumps, they were fantasizing a better realm. It took ten years for the “light bulb” to turn on and for him to realize this. A similar story is told dealing with music notes. The final, more complex story in the writing dealt with judges and a court case. Through all of his life experiences, he learned that education doesn’t end until life ends because you never know when you’re going to understand something you hadn’t understood before.
I throughly enjoyed this essay. I found it to be very inspirational and shared a point that I myself had never thought of before. We as humans are impatient and want everything in an instance. This essay shows us with education, it takes a great length of time to fully understand things sometimes. Whether you think you fully understand something at first or not, there’s always more to be learned about it.