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I want to lay alongside that striking phrase that ""You are the center of your own universe" another observation, that there is no center to the universe--perhaps said most strikingly by Joanna Russ in "Aesthetics" (rpt. Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism):

There used to be an odd, popular, and erroneous idea that the sun revolved around the earth. This has been replaced by an even odder, equally popular, and equally erroneous idea that the earth goes around the sun. In fact, the moon and the earth revolve around a common center, and this commonly-centered pair revolves w/ the sun around another common center, except that you must figure in all the solar planets here, so things get complicated. Then there is the motion of the solar system w/ regard to a great many other objects, e.g., the galaxy, and if at this point you ask what does the motion of the earth really look like from the center of the entire universe, say (and where are the Glotolog?), the only answer is:
that is doesn't,
Because there isn't.

It occurs to me that contemporary education can work very well when it involves a three-step process:

• being invited into conversation by someone whom you see as "center"
• re-orienting yourself in response: learning to take yourself as center
• acknowledging that this interaction is taking place in a universe where there is no center at all.