Like travel, education definitely can broaden a person's horizons beyond the everyday. As I have been practicing digital photography for my upcoming class, I have twice walked around the lake behind our city hall building to take pictures of the scenery and wildlife. I have twice seen a family of moorhens and watched the male valiantly try to distract me from watching his little family. This heron obligingly posed to have his picture taken right next to the library. I have gotten out of the house and experienced nature as a result of my studies.I have marched out into fields and marshes to collect insects for an entomology class, scooped up a dead rat from the road for zoology, and rejoiced upon slipping in a patch of algae I needed as a sample for botany. My sister and I love to visit cemeteries to look at the headstones. After our botany class, we realized that we were wandering through the cemetery in Micanopy (near Gainesville) studying not the tombstones, but the lichen growing on them. We have examined paintings by Bosch and Botticelli at the Prado Museum in Spain after studying them in class, and taken classes on the Holocaust after visiting Auschwitz in Poland. Education can lead to travel, and travel is always an education. The two go hand in hand. I can think of no better ways to expand one's life experience than these.
