I love listening to professors.  I’m a professor.  I don’t mind if people listen to me or not, but I love to listen to professors.  More than that – I love to learn.  I love learning what professors have learned and studied.

I was listening to a professor share his ideas.  I wrote about him in the last post.  I bought one of his books.  I was struck by this idea that he has been a professor for most of his life.  But the thing that stands out to me is not so much his teaching, but his learning.  He’s a great teacher, but the stuff that he’s learning is phenomenal.

He wrote about a research project that took over 14 years to complete.  I have been a professor for 9 years.  I would say that I have been working on my research for a few years.  I am inspired by someone that would spend years working on research.  I have taken a break from my research, but I need to start up again.  I am pretty interested in what I would learn after 14 years of researching.  Have you ever thought about what you would learn if you studied something that long.  What would you learn if you spent 20 years? 30 years?  Do you think about your learning?

If I did research for that long, I think I would have more questions than answers.  I think I would write a book.  I think I would inspire a young professor and they might want to start their research up again.

So were you wondering what this has to do with identity?  Well…..nothing really.  It does tell you about my identity.  I think about learning.