09/14/2026
“FIVE MINUTES TO FIX IT”
For the past three weeks, I've had a tire that kept losing air.
Every two days, I would stop and put more air in it. And then I'd go on with my life.
Except I really wasn't just going on with my life.
One morning, it made me late for an important board meeting. I found myself thinking about how fast I was driving. I wondered whether the tire would hold when I needed to stop or make a turn. Every time I got into my car, somewhere in the back of my mind was the same thought: Is today the day this tire finally goes flat? What if it causes further damage to my car? What if it causes me to have an accident and hurt myself or someone else? It weighed heavily on me. I didn’t want to take the time to stop and fix it, so I kept driving.
And I kept putting air in it.
I kept spending money putting quarters into gas station air supply machines to get by until the next time.
For three weeks, I managed the problem instead of fixing it.
Finally, I gave up an hour of my day, took the car in, waited my turn, and asked someone to look at it.
Do you know what was wrong?
A nail.
A tiny nail, less than two inches long that I couldn’t possibly see because I didn’t have the right tools to lift the car, spin the tire, and see a tiny dot that was a nail with the head wore off due to driving on it.
The man studied the problem, a nail without a head. He went back inside his shop, found the right tools for the job, struggled to pull out the nail, and eventually repaired the tire, and in less than five minutes said, "You're all set."
And there was no charge.
I had spent three weeks worrying about something that took the right person five minutes to fix.
And standing there, I realized how often we do exactly that in life.
We compensate. We adjust. We work around things. We change plans. We lose time. We carry worry. Sometimes we even change the way we move through the world because of one small thing we've never stopped long enough to address.
Sometimes the problem really is enormous. But sometimes, there's just a nail in the tire.
And sometimes the strongest thing we can do is stop managing the problem long enough to find the right person, ask for help, and fix it.
Because there are enough things in life we cannot control.
We don't need to keep carrying the ones we can.
For three weeks, I managed the problem instead of fixing it.
I kept putting air in that tire and going on with my life. I adjusted my schedule around it. I worried about it. I drove differently because of it. I even spent money on it.
And all along, the problem was a nail less than two inches long.
Once I finally went to someone who knew what to do, the repair took less than five minutes.
And there was no charge.
Standing there afterward, I realized something.
Every day, there are people in our communities doing exactly what I did.
They're managing their lives around something they believe is holding them back.
Maybe there's a job they want, a career they want to begin, or a college program they've convinced themselves is beyond their reach. Maybe they didn't finish high school. Maybe they need to improve their reading or math skills. Maybe they need English-language instruction. Maybe they are passed over for promotion time after time.
So they compensate.
They work around it.
They tell themselves, "Maybe later."
And sometimes they spend years worrying about a problem because they imagine fixing it will be harder than simply learning to live with it.
That's why I wanted to share this with you.
Come through our door.
Give us five minutes.
Tell us where you are and tell us where you want to go.
You don't have to know how to get there. That's our job. I don’t know how to repair a tire with a nail. I don’t have the tools. I don’t have the training. What I do have is a team of experts in helping build life-long careers to get people where they want to be. They have the tools. They have training.
You see, we are specialists. We know how to assess where you are, explain your options, and help you build a path forward. And just like the gentleman who repaired my tire, we're not going to charge you for helping you get back on the road.
Your education should never be the nail in the tire that keeps you from going where you want to go.
And perhaps the problem you've been carrying for years isn't nearly as impossible as you think.
Sometimes, you just need to pull over.
Walk through the right door.
And ask someone who knows how to help.
Three weeks of adding air. Three weeks of checking the tire. Three weeks of worrying about whether it would hold, adjusting around the problem, and carrying that little bit of anxiety everywhere I went.
Then I finally took it to someone who knew what to do.
A tiny nail. Five minutes. Fixed.
And that’s Adult Education.
People can spend years building their lives around something they believe is an enormous obstacle. They work around it. They compensate for it. They tell themselves they’ll deal with it later. Sometimes they even change where they think they can go in life because of it.
And sometimes all it takes is walking through our door and saying, “Can you help me?” The five minutes it takes to talk to an Adult Education specialist may get you back on the road to where you want to be. Five minutes can eliminate the barriers you have been spending countless hours, days, even years, trying to overcome on your own.
Five Minutes.
No charge.
And “You’re all set.”
Southeast TN Adult Education
844-688-7944
We strengthen local workforce by providing free job-training skills and education preparedness across 6 Southeast Tennessee counties.
