It's harvest season again here in Canterbury.  Summer is gone and has given way to the browns and oranges of autumn as the great yearly cycle comes once more to its end.  Despite being a city, Canterbury is quite a small metropolis and less than an hour’s brisk walk in any direction will take you out into some of the famously green countryside that earned Kent its title as “The Garden of England”.

It’s hard not to see the great round bales of hay rising in many fields as the harvest is gathered in.  Orchards are plucked empty from apples and pears that have been growing for months.  Even the animals in their fields are being brought closer to places where they may have shelter from the coming winter. 

For the farmers, autumn is still the time of the harvest that it always was.  The time that they reap the benefit of all the hard work that went into this years crop.  From preparing the ground to sowing the seed, all the way to drawing it from the ground and getting ready for the next year to come. 

It’s a bit like distance learning – you put in the time and effort and, with enough of it, you’ll eventually reap your reward.  It might begin with a few simple things – a qualification or a new school needed to advance in life.  But from there it can go so much further – a springboard for future studies, the doorway to a new career.  An entire new life can come simply from the gains made after a few months or years of study.

There is an old Chinese saying I was once told:  The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.  The second best time is now.  Had we started studying a year or two ago we may well be reaping the rewards of it today.  We can’t change the past – that boat has long since sailed.  But we can set in motion the future.  That lesson we study today is one step closer to that qualification tomorrow.  That course enrolled in is the first step towards that newer better life we all dream of. 

But planting a crop isn’t easy.  The ground must be prepared, the seed planted.  It much be cared and nurtured until it is ready for harvest.  In the same way distance learning requires ongoing commitment if you are ever to reap the harvest. 

But I can tell you from experience, it’s definitely worth it!

Until Next Time

Daryl Tempest-Mogg.

Director of Vocational Studies

ADL