I pledge to be a lifelong learner.

I stumbled upon this idea through out my highschool journey and i kept thinking to
myself, what have I learned in these past years of formal education enough to carry me throughout the rest of my
life. Will my island of knowledge forever stay this size? Lifelong learning opens your eyes to new perspectives and it
make us a more well-rounded person. Lifelong learning helps us engage in new ideas and hopefully in result find a
new passion in life. Lifelong learning teaches us to embrace that childlike curiosity we all once had and opens our
eyes to new perspectives. Like me and five percent of this global population are terribly afraid of spiders. I mean look
at them they come in all different shapes and sizes. So i became so fed up. One day i wanted to know their purpose
on this earth so i decided to do a google search. And what i learned was that they not only control our net and fly
population on this earth, but they also protect our crops. The crops that make some of our favorite food. Imagine
the world without your favorite chocolate cake or your favorite maki rice? Deciding to take a second and do a simple
google search truly changed my mind around about something i was unsure about. So why don't we do this with
people we meet every day? i mean people come in all different shapes and sizes, colors, races religions. why don't
we take that second and do a simple google search or even ask a polite question to figure out how they see the
world how they look at things differently than Us? this would make us a more well-rounded person and in the end
make the world a better place. lifelong learning teaches us to engage in new ideas and then hopefully find a new
passion in life.

I, Hannah Sophia Mendoza, from 11 ABM, and I am here to tell you about the value of life long learning.

Lifelong learning for humans in the school of Earth. Its such a nice title for this speech im doing. I stand with the
wise words of many of the world's greatest thinkers, leaders, and business tycoons in their concept of Education
and learning. John Dewey who is a speaker said that education is not the preparation for life. Education is life itself.
Albert Einstein said that when we stop learning we start dying. And Zig Ziglar said, life is a classroom, only those
who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class. So what all of these guys are saying is that
our biggest and most valuable learning comes from our experience of life itself. So, another way of looking at this,
is that the school that we are all enrolled in from the moment we are born, is the school of life on earth. So I like to
call it the earth school in which we are always learning now. How many of you have been to an educational
institution called school? anyone been to school? yes all of us here have and interestingly we are in the premises of
a school today. So we know that in school there is a curriculum, there is a syllabus, there are learning objectives like
we learn how to multiply or we learn how to construct a sentence. So perhaps in our school of life, in the school of
Earth, there would be a curriculum and there would be learning objectives for us but what could they be? what are
we here to learn about and how? I have come to understand that life presents us with moments of challenge
where we are uncomfortable and moments of support where we are comfortable. And since we are living in
duality, both happen concurrently. So at any given point in time we will be experiencing some challenges. Like
maybe you were rejected by someone that you love, or you failed your exam, or you have aches and pains and
migraines. But at the same time there will be at least one area in your life that is supporting you. Like you have
enough money in your bank account, you have friends that are supporting you or you have a personal resource of
inner strength or resilience. And these areas of support feel really good but that's not where learning comes from.
What we are here to learn in the school of Earth is acceptance. What I mean by acceptance, the definition of this,
because some people think that acceptance means approval and they collapse the two together. Well the
acceptance that I'm talking about is the absence of judgment of both good and bad it is not about liking or
approving or disapproving of something. It is the art of just being at peace. And when I say at peace, the mind and
body feels calm. The lifelong education on earth is about acceptance. So far we have been conditioned to learn this
acceptance through challenges but I'd like to leave you with a thought. And that thought is, maybe we don't need
the challenge to learn this acceptance. Maybe that's just the way that we've been learning so far. What if we were
as conscious in our good moments as we are in our challenging moments? what if we could go to the peninsula and
sip our tea in our fancy teacups and still feel present, still accept ourselves, accept other people, feel connected all
around? Maybe life will not need to present us with so many challenges then. Maybe the ups and downs will look
less dramatic. And maybe we can go back to the way when we were children when we were just learning how to
walk and we didn't see it as a challenge? wouldn't that be an idea we are thinking about? thank you