The earliest memories I have are memories of school: fighting over a toy with a fellow preschooler, learning the alphabet, and the gradual transition in difficulty from midday naps to algebra. Not surprising that those are my core memories—the pursuit of education constitutes a staggering proportion of our lives, starting when we’re in diapers and reinforced till we’re job-hunting twenty-somethings searching for the meaning of life. The routine of class, homework, and extracurriculars forms the foundation of our daily existence.
For many childhood overachievers, including me, it forms the basis of our philosophy on success and learning as well. We dutifully do what we are told, study for our tests, and are suitably rewarded by gold stars and certificates for free personal pan pizzas. This process trains us remarkably well, like mice in a lab: learn material, take test. Press lever, receive treat. Ever the resourceful mouse, I learned quickly that it wasn’t necessary to fully absorb the content of the classes. All you needed was a pocket of memory for short-term memorization, a mental tote bag to be emptied and reused every few weeks. Memorize and regurgitate. Consume, spit, repeat. The labcoats never knew any better. (And to be clear, it’s not their fault. Teachers are as much bound to the system as students. They do their best with what they’re given.)
I’ve been in school since I was three years old. I went straight from high school to college, then from college to graduate school. My reasoning was that if I ever took a gap year, I’d never want to go back. I saw school as a tedious exercise: a means to an end, a lever to push. I hated the routine and the meaningless transactionality of it all, even as it continued to define my goals. In elementary, middle, and most of high school I was at the top of my class; I studied constantly, sacrificed sleep and socialization, and ignored social activities that could jeopardize my grades. Even then, I fought to hold my status out of pride and pragmatism rather than any interest in the curriculum. I wanted the allegorical treats—the recognition, the praise, and the Holy Grail of a good college and career.
Eventually I burned out. I got tired of the grind, and I adopted an academic approach you could call “calculated apathy.” In the majority of my college classes, I coasted by on innate intelligence rather than effort. I still wanted A’s, but if I could get away with skipping the class and skimming the chapter before the test, I did. Most of the time, I got away with it. At the end of my formal education, I was still whipping up papers the night before they were due, and reading for class was a quaint, laughable artifact of the past.
It didn’t matter whether I was studying hard or hardly studying: my investment in school was tenuous at best. Diplomas were the keys to a decent career, so I plodded my way towards graduation. Even when I cared about the material in my classes, any natural interest was steamrolled by the more immediate need to binge and purge answers. The structure of academia stopped me from seeing beyond the next exam, so I plowed on, credit by credit.
Suddenly, it was time for graduation. I had won the all-important piece of paper that acted as my key to the Real World, and the door opened to my nascent career. I moved to Chicago to start my new life as a working professional.
It was disorienting to leave the structure and familiarity of higher education, to transition to a full-time job that counted on my skills and my drive rather than my ability to bullshit at 4am. A stable career had been the goal from Day One back in preschool, but it was always such a hypothetical goal, a far-off dream of the distant future. Now it was real, and it was different.
In the working world there were still requirements and expectations, but there was no comparison to the artificial demands of academia. Here there was no busywork, no inane paper-writing for a meaningless grade. For the first time, there was a tangible consequence to my work, a visible significance that never existed in the fishbowl of class. If I learned my company’s software thoroughly enough to teach it well, our clients would thrive. If I gained new skills, I’d be able to use them actively to help coworkers and clients alike.
As I settled into adult life, I became more and more invested in my job. Where formal education had been a series of mandated hoop to jump through, here was a gold mine of choice and independence where my work was directly correlated with meaningful results. In a small team, I had the flexibility to explore areas of expertise within my overall jurisdiction, the autonomy to execute my own initiatives, and the influence to impact important decisions. Naturally there were imperfections unique to working life—finding my place in the team, navigating company culture and relationships, making mistakes—but these were surmountable. Because unlike in academia, my work had meaning.
As I learned more about my company and what my role would be, I started to feel something. For the first time in a long time, I felt the tug of curiosity. It was a small flicker among the embers that formal education had almost smothered. I started seeing opportunities to learn new things, and they were...exciting. So I took them.
Before I knew it, the flicker had grown to a flame, and then to a roaring bonfire. I wanted to learn more, do more, know more. The more I saw the more I wanted, and I burned through bits of new knowledge like kindling. I wanted to learn how to write SQL, so our CTO taught me in the space of two months. I wanted to be able to execute more technical tasks, so I asked for training, and got it. I wanted to become an expert in my domains of support and client success, so I read articles and books voraciously.
I hadn’t remembered what it was like to feel that rush and excitement of learning something new. For a long time I’d let the mind-numbing monotony of class and credits leech my natural curiosity and replace it with dutiful boredom. I never realized how much I loved learning until I left school. And now that the fire’s been lit, I intend to keep it burning.
I wish it hadn’t taken so long to rediscover my love of learning. I wish that school had fed it instead of almost destroying it.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it’s never too late to get a real education.
No comments:
Post a Comment