My Brain Loves You!

Learning is important. I think that statement is nearly indisputable. Even among my fellow classmates, the idea that learning is important is a universal one. After all what could we do without learning? Is it even possible to live without learning?

While learning is important, I think the way you learn things and the things that you learn vary greatly from person to person. One person may read a well-written book about physics and know just as much or more as a person who spent a year taking a class. So while everyone can agree that learning is important (I say everyone because in the case of this blog, people who don't think learning is important are considered too stupid to be considered a living being), I think, very few can agree on how or what we learn.

Take, for example, the many college graduates that I know in my life who have a career that barely relates to their major, if it even relates at all. They spent years getting that major and now they aren't even doing something relating to it. For this reason, I must assume that it doesn't so much matter what you learn, but that you learn at all. I guess in some cases, learning something specific to do a specific skill is important, like studying medicine to become a doctor. Still, I think for a majority of people, it doesn't so much matter what they learned but to know that they spent a good amount of their time learning.

But what exactly is it that they learned that's so important? Is it the skills of a hard-working person they earned? Did they learn to be charming and polite? What did they learn that makes them so much better than everyone else?

I know that at the end of this year when I earn my high school diploma, it wont mean that I'm any smarter than someone who didn't earn their diploma. It wont mean that I learned valuable life lessons by going to a school full of a variety of people. It wont mean anything at all, except that I lived up to some other person's standards of education. Sure, I learned but that diploma is not the most important result of that learning. I don't need their pretty piece of paper or praise. I'm grateful for all of my wonderful teachers but learning is something that anyone can do on their own and they should never have to live up to any other person's expectation of an education.

There are so many different kinds of educations. Sure the straight-A student at my school could easily get into Harvard, but how would they do wandering around the streets of L.A.? The girl who's read every book she's heard of, could probably catch any literary reference in any of the media, but could she conquer basic math? I think people get so caught up in educating themselves one way that they fail to see all the other things they could learn.

So many people are always working for that diploma, but do they fail to learn about the world or people or life?