So my husband came home on Friday all in a panic. He has been selected to do a three-minute presentation on any topic of his choice and deliver it to his co-workers. He was given a week to finish all the research and everyone has to do it either next Monday or Friday.

As I listened to my husband explain his task, I thought it was a pretty awesome assignment.

Easy, I thought. Three minutes is nothing. It goes pretty quickly. The problem was actually culling all the information you were going to dig up and making a short, but coherent presentation was tougher. The editing was actually going to be the most difficult thing to do.

I was actually more excited about the whole thing than he was.

Hubby had a very different reaction, though. For him, giving presentations was definitely not easy. He doesn’t have a lot of experience with the whole thing.

Since I spent most of high school, college, and grad school writing papers and presenting on them, the idea was very familiar and not scary for me. To a certain extent, as a teacher, my job is to present ideas and information to students. I forgot that many people don’t have the same experience with communication and writing. Besides, I also love to write and don’t mind researching facts and statistics to back up my points and opinions.

Hubby then went on to claim that he’s never written a report in college. I quizzed him on that and he insisted that he hardly wrote papers while he was supposed to be getting his degree. (Gosh, his poor parents wasted all that money in funding that education! I am mad on their behalf!) I still find that hard to believe, though. I think he’s just forgotten what it’s like to be in school. It’s been more than twenty years since he graduated, after all.

As we were brainstorming ideas on what he could research and present about, I realized that hubby stopped learning when he graduated from college. He has always been a person who seeks a life of ease and comfort, which means he doesn’t want to be bothered about learning anything new. This makes me extremely sad because I’m the complete opposite.

I’ve always said that I want to be a professional student. I love reading and discussions in class. I love listening to professors give talks and lectures. I am constantly reading or listening to new ideas. I like to think deeply about things and I explore that a lot in my writing.

I think this desire to continue learning is what’s keeping me sharp, or at least I hope it is. Primarily, the idea is to stay mentally alert to prevent brain decay and Alzheimer’s disease. I want to be intellectually healthy when I am older.

But because he’s dealing with so many issues right now, hubby feels like he doesn’t have the time and the energy to deal with expanding the mind. And that shouldn’t be the attitude to have when you’re trying to live a life of quality.

I feel bad for him, but I also hope that he gets everything done in time.