I was recently reading a book about living a joyful life, or something like that, and this one sentence really stuck in my head. School never ends, the classroom is everywhere.  The classroom is not necessarily a room with a teacher and 25 desks.  Our original classroom started out in the crib, and then onto the sandbox.  Although we did spend many years in classrooms,  some of our hardest lessons were learned in other places.   We silently watched our parents, we learned and  we grew up to be like them, or not to be like them.   Many have more book knowledge, more degrees and that is admirable and in many cases  more profitable,  but how does that compare to life lessons?  If classrooms are everywhere, everyone is learning…something.  Some of the most successful people talk about having a mentor.  Someone that came into their life,  saw a raw talent and  believed in it.  They never gave up on you until you believed in it yourself.  What also made me think about classrooms is the other day I was learning how to mold cold porcelain.  There were five of us and as we got to know each other and shared bits of our prior lives, it was amazing to me how many different  talents they had, and how involved they were in other activities.  When I think of my grandparents when they were my age I couldn’t imagine them playing pickleball, baseball or golf, for that matter.  I never saw my grandparents in bathing suits.  It seemed their classrooms were gone.   The Villages,  on the other hand, is one big classroom.  Whether it is athletic lessons, artistic lessons, computer lessons, health lessons, and more; they are all here and we are really having fun learning.  I  especially enjoy the  lessons learned by others, that were unpacked when they arrived here and unselfishly shared.  It is so true…school never ends, the classroom is everywhere.