Letter to My Grandson

Hi Grandson,

You just got back from a short vacation trip and also just finished 3 months of minimal learning because your school was closed. You also have two months of summer vacation before school starts up again. Unless you take some control of your education, you will have passed through five months without any formal or serious learning. This might be a “fun” time for you, but as you get older and become more responsible for your actions, you might wish you did not have this gap in your education.

You are a very smart young man and are in a stage of your life where you are able to learn things quickly, and to allow the period of no leaning to continue, will be possibly placing yourself at a future disadvantage. I suggest that you set up for yourself a personal learning program for the next two months. I cannot say “do this” or “do that” nor could I administer or look over you. This is something you need to do for yourself. Here are some things you could consider doing.

• Start reading books. Any type of book is ok. It could be a mystery, fantasy story, science fiction, novel, biography, how to get rich book or any other how to book. The books could be serious or nonsense. The subject could be anything that interests you. You might start reading a book you think you would like but not like it, so stop reading it; and then start another one. If you set up a schedule to read one book every two weeks, you will have completed four books by the time school starts.
• Read newspapers. Any type of article is ok. You can just read sports stories, business articles, articles that Uncle Andy writes, or news stories. You could read the whole article or just the headlines and sub heads or skim the article. Read at least one newspaper a day and try to spend about 20 minutes doing that. One very interesting paper is The Wall Street Journal that Daddy gets. A suggestion is to look at it every day. Start by looking at every page without trying to read anything and just turn the pages and do this for every page every day for a week. At that point I think you will want to read some articles and then you will want to spend too much time reading that paper, so set up a limit where you will not spend more than 20 minutes a day reading the WSJ. Stop at that 20 minute limit, but do so after you have looked at every page.
• Read a magazine every once in a while. Pick any type of magazine – sports, comic books, Mad, history, news or photo magazines.
• Write something every day. Write what you did that day. Write what you want to do when you get older. Write a letter to me or Grandma telling us what you want as a present or what you did or want to do or what got you mad, or even how stupid it is to write us a letter. Pick a speech or quote by a famous person and copy it in a notebook. You can even copy an entire speech, but that seems boring, but maybe the speech by Lou Gehrig when he was honored by the Yankees when he had to stop playing won’t be boring.
• Practice an instrument. Spend 20 minutes a day practicing your saxophone. [if the person reading this does not play an instrument, use this time to start to learn one]
• Practice a language. Spend 20 minutes a day practicing Spanish. If you want, I could lend you a Superman comic book I have that was written in Español. [If you have not started learning a foreign language, then pick one and start now.]
• Vocabulary. If you read or hear a word that you do not know the meaning of, look it up. You can do that easily on your iPad or iPhone. That is an excellent way to learn, and it is quick and pretty easy.
• If you like something, then try learning more about it.

What is important is that you do something to take you beyond what you already know. You are a very smart 12 year old, but not compared to a grown up, although in some cases you have great insights and a great sense of humor that is more typical for someone much older than you are. No one can know everything they need to know; there is always more to learn. Learning comes from experiences, and reading and a desire to grow and not just to be better, but to be the best person you could be.

In today’s digital world you don’t need to read physical books but they could be on your iPad. However, there are some physical books that I think are worth having and using. Some are the big picture books of how things work, or maps or atlases, history books, or even bound volumes of comic books like Mad, or Peanuts or Dilbert (this is more for adults). If you call me, maybe I can come up with a suggestion you would like.

You like sports and spend time each day playing and practicing it. Well, spend some time practicing reading or writing or anything else that can help your smart fertile mind grow and develop the best way it could.

Developing your mind will provide you with learning from others’ experiences, equip you with perspectives, arm you with an edge of skepticism, and give you confidence to question and challenge claims, beliefs and values that seem spurious to you, and enable you to attain your full rich potential. The bottom line is to not let the opportunity to learn pass by you these next two months. You are very smart and can be smarter, and it is solely up to you. Do it!

Love,
Grandpa Ed

If you have any business or financial issues you want to discuss please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].