Acadia Lifelong Learning: ALL for one and one for ALL!

Acadia Lifelong Learning: ALL for one and one for ALL!
By Mike Butler

I haven’t been an official Acadia student for many years but I’ve made a pact with myself to always continue learning, each and every day. This world is filled with so many wonderful things to discover that you can be a student all your life. Learning does not stop when you graduate from high school or walk across the stage to collect your university degree.

I’ve heard of the Acadia Lifelong Learning (ALL) program before but was re-introduced to the concept recently through a great friend and one of the coordinators, Heather McNally. Heather and I sat down and chatted about the program, which is something really special, useful, and very exciting to have here in the valley.

Acadia Lifelong Learning is intended to provide you with the means to explore interests, passions, and curiosities without bogging you down with the extreme fees and stresses of a university degree. Every year, ALL provides affordable courses and events for adults of all ages, from arts and science to hobbies and general know-how. It’s a perfect way for Acadia University to share the talents of some of their most compelling and thoughtful people, as well as giving a platform to many interesting experts in our local community.

Just to spark your interest a little, this year there will be courses in art taught by Twila-Robar DeCoste, courses on the coffee and wine industry, film history, global warming issues, Shakespeare, researching family trees, photography, writing fiction with Susan Haley, the lumber industry in Nova Scotia, and so much more! The cost is very affordable. What a great way for friends to connect, by getting together and taking the same course and then having coffee chats and meetings about it afterwards. You might even meet that special someone in the course and spend a lifetime learning new things about each other!

If you are age 50+, you can audit one of these fantastic courses for free, but the courses are now accessible to all ages. This opens doors for so many positive possibilities for future courses to be offered and different professors and makes for a very exciting time for the ALL program.

Registration for the fall courses is fast approaching (early October!) so don’t delay. All the information you need is online at all.acadiau.ca, or you can keep up to date through Facebook under Acadia Lifelong Learning or by calling 902-585-1434 or emailing questions to allinfo@acadiau.ca.

Learning has no age restrictions or limitations! ALL you have to do is open yourself up to something new. I hope you ALL enjoy it!