To my friends feeling like life is not getting any easier as you grow up, this message is for you.

In school you are taught math lessons, science and history. You take on piano classes or sports, but the learning doesn't stop in the classroom, and I'm telling you that as a girl planning on being an elementary teacher someday. There is something to learn everywhere, every day. Sometimes it confronts you, and sometimes you have to seek out the new knowledge, but it's important to never stop learning.

Lessons are often taught in times of frustration, sadness or when you feel distraught. And the reason for this is that learning a lesson is hard! This is what I experienced today:

It started this morning at work. I'm in charge of 20 children at a summer camp each week. Every week is unique as far as the kinds of kids that sign up, and what all takes place. Today it seemed as though whenever I told a kid a rule or gave them an instruction, such as "please line up on the wall" or "do not spit on your friend", they would not listen. They were focused on having fun. I kept thinking about how selfish they were being. Why don't they realize that their actions make myself and the rest of their peers frustrated? Then I thought back to last year's child psychology class where I was taught the stages of life. Yep, these kids are behaving just as you'd expect. At my second job working with kids, the same thing happened. "Don't climb up the slide"-what do you think the next thing they do is? You guessed it, ran straight up the slide, laughing the whole time, knowing very well that the consequence was to sit in time out. While children are often hard to control and cause a lot of stress on camp leaders like myself, I know there are a lot of lessons these kids have left to learn.

Now let's focus on my 16 year old coworker. As soon as camp was over, I immediately called my friend venting about how my coworker wouldn't do anything to help me and seemed to avoid any leadership role at all. Just like with the kids, I was growing irritated. It took me a while to realize it, but he is brand new at working with kids. He hasn't had those experiences that teach him how to be a good leader or strategies to help him succeed in his career. He's still learning those lessons. And there's a lot of them-I'm still trying to figure most of them out as well.

Whether you're 6, 16 or 66, new lessons are always being thrown at you. There's always something to learn whether it's in a classroom or not. Just don't forget that everyone is on a different page of their lesson book. That's the message I learned today. Plain and simple, life is just one giant lesson that never stops teaching you tricks to give you the most successful and happy experiences you could possibly imagine. So soak it all in, and stop all that stress and frustration. Every lesson serves a purpose. You're going to get through them all, I promise. <3

Sincerely,

Stressed-out college student still searching for the answers in life