habitus

It's graduation season: the time of year that we release another round of humans into the 'real world' and hope that they don't break anything too quickly.

I know a few people who are graduating from high school this year, and as easy as it is to be cynical about millenials and the rising generation and this whole charade called "growing up"...well, there are plenty of good kids out there.  And having inexperienced, ambitious people running amok pumped up with "achieve your dreams and change the world" does have its perks.

We could say plenty of things about the rising generation, but perhaps more culturally-persistent is this institution called high school that we continue to insist is very important.

There are a lot of criticisms about high school and its associated curriculum.  It doesn't actually prepare students for the 'real world'.  Its benchmark standards are too low.  It creates opportunities for bullying, over-stressing, depression, and so on.  Its underfunded.  Teachers are too tired or don't care or aren't paid enough.  Yet somehow through all these criticisms, it still remains a cultural highlight in many peoples' lives.  Or at least, it certainly appears that way, with the continued success of high school-centered media, the fact that everyone and their parents keep tomes of dusty yearbooks somewhere and refuse to get rid of them, and our persistent alliance to whatever mascot geography happened to assign to us (go wolves!)

I wasn't highly amused by my own ceremonious graduation. High school was one of the least important achievements to me.  As a fellow student pointed out when we were all assigned to write graduation speeches, all that a high school graduation means is that you have followed the law and gone to school for the majority of your life. Thank you, law-abiding citizens.

I've been in the 'real world' for a few years now, and as it turns out, I've actually had to rely on things that I learned in high school a few times.  Yes, diagramming sentences still hasn't come up.  But I'm getting a new perspective on what it means to be educated, what it means to be prepared for life, and what high school can and should actually offer.

Scene change.

I went to a high school choir concert last week and the director had a few of the graduating seniors share things that they had learned throughout their choir career. Comments and quotes were made such as
"If your name is going to be on it, be proud of it."
"On time is late--be early."
"Always look sharp."
"If you want something, ask [the nicer person] first."
and so on. After several quotes, inside jokes, and explanations, the director asked for a comment about music, and the only thing they said was "learn it".

Back to soliloquy.

The choir was obviously a really good choir and their musical abilities were phenomenal.  They won various awards throughout the year and are consistently among the top choirs in their state. Obviously, they've learned music.  They've become impressive musicians and could probably sight read or count rhythms or blend effortlessly.  But come the end of the year, the lessons that stuck out most to them were more attuned to how to live well.  They were based on the relationship they had built with their classmates and director more than any particular musical principle.  They were habits that their teacher had encouraged them to form in order to be successful.

I think that this is where high school is the most valuable.  It helps us form good habits of personal accountability, preparedness, and work ethic. We learn study skills that we can rely on in college, whether our high school classes gave us a good foundation for the course or not.  We have an opportunity to interact with teachers and learn how to work problems out respectfully. We can be involved in clubs and sports and competitions, to learn to cooperate with others and actually produce something that is entirely ours.

I put a lot of academic effort into high school, and most of the facts and theories I learned in high school have stuck with me far better than a lot of what I've studied in college.  I don't use it all every day, but for the most part, I'm really glad that I know things like calculus and how Mexico's government works and what a Scarlet Letter means.

More than the academic value, however, high school has an incredible value in the formation of habits. High school gives you lots of opportunities to choose who you'll be. You make these choices in the classes you take and the activities you do and the people you be with, but you also choose simple habits. There's the routine stuff like getting to class on time and bringing your books and turning in your homework that turns you into someone who is well-prepared. Then there are habits that the life-changing teachers add to the curriculum.  Either by example, or by directly applying it in class, teachers are able to mentor their students in ways that go much deeper than the periodic table and knowing geography.

I don't remember all of my Spanish vocabulary words, but I had a wonderful example of patience and social grace in that class that has helped me in countless situations.
I barely remember anything from dissecting sharks (except the smell), but that science teacher was an example of creativity, and encouraged everyone to do courageous and exhilarating things...just to make sure we're alive.
I definitely do remember how to do polynomial long-division, but I treasure that algebra class because of the vision of unity that teacher had, and how he balanced having fun and getting things done.
I'm sad that I've forgotten the songs from choir, but I learned how to present myself well, how to help others succeed, and made it a habit to stay focused and make the most of work time.
I haven't used enough psychology to remember it well, but being able to accept other people and their ideas while still maintaining my own values is something that I'll keep using for the rest of my life.
I will probably always need to look up the integration of trig functions, but I appreciate the time my calculus teacher took to talk with our class when there were problems, and to help us work through them.

All the other things you need to know in the 'real world'--filing taxes, changing a tire, making an appointment, buying a house, doing CPR, balancing a budget, washing clothes--you might have to learn from another source.  Thank goodness for mothers and the internet.  But the things that will prepare you most for life are the personal habits that you make before you're actually in the 'real world'.

"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
-Aristotle and friends

to be or not to be

I've been wanting to get around to writing this for way too long now, and I guess the amount of stuff I have to do has finally pushed me to write it.

I have spent a fair amount of thinking--I think perhaps more than most do--about being.  A lot of who we are as individuals seems to be defined by what we do.  We seem to derive a large amount of information from these little facts. I can introduce myself as an engineer, and you will immediately have very different ideas about me than if I were to present myself as a doctor, a photographer, an international travel agent, a nun, a parent, or a clinical parakeet whisperer.  All of these assumptions and how you would then interact with me are defined by so little information as a simplified explanation of what I do.

Of course, in many ways, doing something has a lasting change on how we think and act and see the world.  Our efforts and our experiences can wire our brains and create habits of reacting to the world in certain ways, and for this the simplification of one's occupation can actually be quite informative.  Telling you that I'm an engineer might make you think that I am analytical and precise.  Presenting myself as a writer can give me a more creative flair, while introducing myself as a religious leader might lead you to take me more seriously--or just ignore me entirely.  These occupational identities consistently provide society with a quick judgment on how important they think someone is, what kind of person they might be, and how they plan on interacting with them.

Although there seems to be an incredible amount of importance assigned to this bit of information, it might not be the best drive for decision-making.  These decisions can range from the interactions of an individual with new people, to the expectations that people around them have of them, to the way that they think of themselves.

This system of defining labels for who you are based on what you do has its benefits, but I found a different perspective quite a while ago that gives somewhat of a guide in navigating who to "be" in the future:

"Don't ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, but what problems do they want to solve. This changes the conversation from 'Who do I want to work for?' to 'What do I need to learn to be able to do that?' "

                 -Jaime Casap, Google Global Education Specialist

This problem-solving perspective resonates with me because it really captures the dream of changing the world, at least in some small way.  It also builds the need for the development of life skills rather than just a preparation for an occupation.  And it helps us to look outside of our own problems and see larger systems at work that we can affect in order to do good for ourselves and for others.  That sounds like much more than a career.  It builds on an underlying passion.

One of the most excellent aspects of this approach is that there are many different approaches one can take to solving problems.

From a career-driven perspective, lot of approaches dictate that there is some ideal path to take that will help you become a physician or a journalist or a heliophysicist.  As life usually turns out, though, those paths get interrupted by life, and the fact that people are individuals.  You can ask a lot of people what it took for them to get where they are right now, and it is not uncommon that their story includes an unexpected shift in the path they had put themselves on.  For example, I worked with a nuclear engineer whose undergraduate degree was in history.  Things certainly changed around there.

With a goal of solving problems in mind, it opens up the career path to a broader perspective.  It reverses statements like, "You want to study math? Well, with a math degree, you can become a statistician or an actuary or work with the census or teach or convert to engineering..." to statements like, "You want to solve energy problems?  Well you can do that through research and development or public policy or by starting an energy business... either way, you'll definitely want to understand some chemistry and physics, a bit of math, you'll need to know how to write, and you should understand how to process demographic information..."

There is still a lot of practical value to career paths and having resources like that to help navigate the questions of planning for the future and figuring out what to do.  But with regard to figuring out what to do, I think it holds a lot more promise when we ask ourselves what we want to be involved in and where we want to help, rather than simply what we want to be.

extra

As you may suspect, this is a blog entry that I am writing rather than doing my homework.  I am so rebellious.   But I suppose it's a good opportunity to continue some thoughts about education.

This term, I am taking a sociology class. This class marks the first class outside of engineering that I have taken in over a year.  I've been getting further along in my major and I've been focusing solely on engineering for a while now.

This 'become absorbed in your major' deal is actually part of the program.  You start taking specialized classes (for example, an entire series of classes dedicated to the various manners in which temperatures can change.  I now know more than is comfortable about the subject) and you start thinking and speaking like (in my case) an engineer.

For example, I have replaced all words denoting 'a part of a whole' or 'a contributing piece of something' with the word "component".  I didn't actually take note of this until I was referring to a meal I had made and its various components.  Who even uses ingredients these days?

Figure 1. The sandwich and its components.

I didn't realize just how far down the engineering path I was, though, until I took this sociology class.

I've always been a pretty diverse student, in the sense that I find many topics interesting and do relatively well with them.  This was especially evident during high school, when I had as much opportunity as I wanted to be involved in as much advanced math and science, politics, history, foreign language, literature, and music as I wanted.  So naturally, I took as many classes as possible in all of those subjects, and things were great.  On occasion cross-curricular themes would develop and the whole place was a bit of an educational wonderland for me.

I just figured that things would stay that way.  And I didn't really notice that I had become so focused on engineering that I had begun to let go of some of those other subjects I like.

Part of this happens, of course, because you simply cannot find time to take all of the interesting classes and still graduate with an actual degree before you're 55 years old and under a mountain of student debt.

So thank goodness for generals.  They take a precious few classes from outside your major and make them required so you'll actually be able to take them. :)

I thought I had a decent sociological background such that this new venture would be enriching and fun, and nothing else. So far it has definitely been enriching and generally fun (provided it's not kept me up past midnight) but also surprisingly difficult.

Maybe it's difficult because I underestimated the complexity of the social sciences. Maybe it's difficult because it's an in-depth course on something that I now realize I have no basis for.  I realized for the first time that I should probably read Marx rather than just know about it.  Maybe it's difficult because I am still trying to wrap my brain into this new style of thinking. I can no longer quantify relationships with equations and theorems.... instead the answer to "are farmers influenced by economic motives or lifestyle and family motives?" is "yes."

But there are definitely some things that I love about it, that I just don't get as much in my engineering. There is a lot more discussion and reasoning things out as a class, rather than just running through formulas on a screen.  And in sociology, every case is incredibly unique; you will never evaluate a bunch of situations or outcomes that are the same over and over and over.

I have at times heard criticisms of the current graduation requirements that students take several in-depth general classes in things that are outside of their major or intended career. We live in an increasingly specialized world where the more I know about my chosen field of study, the better I am in it, and I can easily find someone else to do things for me that are outside of my expertise. (That is why we have doctors and accountants and teachers and why services make up a huge part of first-world economies.) Under this logic, it may seem less and less necessary to obtain a general education at the collegiate level.

I do not subscribe to these criticisms or beliefs; in fact, I wish that higher education better encouraged cross-curricular study and general education.  I intend to describe some of the perceived benefits of such an arrangement in later posts. For now, I'm still talking about this strange world of sociology that I've stepped into and how it rocked my little engineering world.

So, in this sociology class we have been focusing on sustainability in agriculture, with especial regard to all of its social elements.  I have read more material than I ever imagined anyone could even publish on trends in farming, political farm issues, use of pesticides, the organic industry, how farms are structured, and so on.  I cannot say that I have learned anything even closely relevant to my intended engineering career. But I still find this an invaluable part of my education.

What I have learned, that I believe will benefit me as a human who intends to live in the world and be an engineer there, is that there is (surprisingly) this whole other world outside of engineering.  Oh sure, I always figured it was there, but sometimes it loses its palpability as you hone in on heat transfer and machine design, and especially as you spend more and more hours in the engineering building, avoiding all social life as you try to churn out homework solutions fast enough.
Well, enough of that. I'm here to embrace a little bit more the social aspects of life that I've begun learning about.

I haven't learned anything helpful about dimensioning and tolerances, but I have begun to see myself as a contributor to a larger society than just the scientific community.  I may not be learning to design tractors, but I am gaining a new understanding and respect for the people who use them. I still don't understand Thevenin circuitry, but I have begun to be aware of patterns in the world that will affect how I act, how my contributions as an engineer might really effect people and their lives, and how those causes and effects are related even to my isolated life as an engineer.

So while this class is certainly not an easy ride and you would think that an engineering student would have enough on their plate already, its something that I think has added value to my education and something that is important to continue to experience throughout education on all levels.

I am learning many important things that engineering just doesn't have a way to teach.

ineptus

Get ready for a couple of posts all in a row about education.  That's what's on my mind right now because that's pretty much all I do!  When they say "full-time college student" they secretly meant "all-the-time college student". There is no 40-hour deal here.  And no paid overtime.

I've been playing this college game for a while now.  I am on the latter-half of things, now with fewer semesters between me and graduation than the semesters I have behind me.  I've been taking the real-deal classes now (no more prerequisites) and I started feeling like I really know what I'm doing here.  I know how to study and test and do homework and I am far enough into my program that I'm pretty familiar with whatever they will throw at me.

Or so I thought.

Turns out, this semester has been full of surprises.  And not the kinds of surprises I was even expecting. (...That's what makes them surprises.)

I cannot even count the number of times I have used the word "inept" or "ineptitude" to describe my new-found feelings for this term.

See, after thinking that I knew what to expect and I was far enough into things that everything would look like a more specialized extension of what I had studied last semester, I have been humbled exceedingly by the actual content of classes this term.

The first is from a course I am taking as part of my general education.  I like being well-rounded and well-read, so I like the idea of general education.  Narrowing choices down as to which upper-level psychology or philosophy or Spanish class I could take was a difficult choice.  This semester, I ended up in a sociology class, which I figured would be a welcome change from all the calculations and formulas I'm usually dealing with.  I had taken a demographic sociology course before and felt decent that I had retained the most important concepts, so this class couldn't be too surprising, while still allowing me to stretch my limits and expand a little into another subject.

Turns out there is no end to the number of sociological things that I do not know, or even have the slightest idea about.
So I get to read.

This phenomena of ineptitude could be expected when you take a class so unrelated to your chosen field of study.  But it has also started happening in my engineering classes.

Some of the concepts and material we learned as freshmen and then never spoke of again have miraculously resurfaced.  And they are in every single class.  After three or four years. Gaaahhhh.  The sudden realization that I in fact, do need to remember all of my past education is a little bit alarming because my brain has been trying not to be a pack rat and get rid of some of the unused stuff up there.
I really hope we kept it instead of donating it to Goodwill.

I thought I was so good at this.  I have never felt so inept at school before.

But this feeling of ineptitude, unqualification, and belittlement is not inherently a bad thing, albeit uncomfortable.  It's probably one of the biggest learning opportunities I'll have all year.  Not only to learn about the electronics I have forgotten and the ins and outs of sociology, but also to learn about myself and how to do things such as handle stress, read my eyes out, study way too many subjects at once, and hopefully figure out a more specific direction for what I am even planning to do with all of this.

Other aspects of myself that I hope to learn about include:

•  how I can actually make a difference in the world, 
• why specializing in something and knowing way too much about it (for example, the many failure modes of steel) is worthwhile, 
• what my priorities are, 
• what I can an cannot live without, and 
• how to simultaneously kick butt at school while not becoming a homework-doing robot, void of fun or emotion.

Something valuable happens when education belittles you and you realize just how big the world is.  Having your eyes opened to the vastness of how much you really don't know is a beautiful experience in a way.  The funny thing is that as we find more answers, those answers spark new questions.  As the expanse of knowledge we have--both as a collective community of humans, but also as individual minds--continues to grow, somehow the realm of what is beyond our knowledge, and therefore what is possible to be discovered and achieved, expands as well.

cognoscere

Okay.  Continuing on with thoughts from places: the return from Europe.

One of the things that I really want to emphasize--that being in Europe has demonstrated to me in daily abundance--is the absolute dearth of knowledge I have.

Please note that the word there is not depth, it is dearth; a word which here means the opposite of depth or breadth or really anything impressive. A veritable lacking, if you will. So there is no typo.

For one thing Europe has history that predates recorded history, and it's so dynamic and diverse across the continent that it's impossible to not learn something that you've never even heard of almost every time you turn around.

Couple that with the myriad languages and dialects you never thought you'd encounter, the foods you've never fathomed, the ways of life you've never considered living.... everything just combines to remind you that you must keep learning, all the time. Don't get lazy and assume you know enough. There are vast realms of things worth finding out and perspectives you didn't know existed!

I mean, I thought myself a clever, well-educated person; well-read enough to at least know a little about most things. But even after all that, I've come to see that the amount of stuff that I know can be condensed into something that might be best described by comparing the volume of the earth to that of the sun.

Earth for scale

Take into consideration the amount of stuff that I truly understand, and we're talking the earth compared to the milky way and beyond here.

One thing I understand quite clearly, though, is this:  I understand nothing.  Which makes for a good paradox, especially because it's true. In my world, the one constructed by me, I understand the majority of things--like 51%. But once I get outside of myself, that amount quickly converges to zero.

And no matter how much learning and experiencing I do in this life, the amount of understanding that I capture will really never rise above zero.

I say this not to belittle our individual mental capacities or existences, but because I think it does us a great deal to realize that the perspective that crowds so much of our consciousness and understanding is frequently hopelessly inadequate at understanding another person.  We can catch glimpses and sympathize. On occasion we even manage empathy. But we cannot assume that we know how someone feels, or can judge them for what they're doing. That's as presumptuous as claiming to understand the intricacies of the universe!

At the same time, we can't expect other people to be able to get on our level, either. Their level of understanding you is just as incomplete as your level of understanding them.  I think that if we both understood this and remembered it more, we'd be more patient and compassionate and, paradoxically, understanding.

So don't forget how much of the World you've left out there completely unexplored! Good luck exploring it all :)

diversas

So, in the past week or so, the internet world has seen quite a lot of commotion about this particular piece of apparel...

Yes.  The infamous dress.

Now, most of us understand why the color-changing phenomenon happened (thanks to the ever-useful input of the scientists.  We love our scientists!) and this post is certainly not to bandwagon about the mystifying dress. Hopefully the hype is dying down and it's a little late for that. Instead, I want to examine a few lessons we might have learned from this whole fiasco:

First, it takes very little to set the internet in an uproar.  I think we all knew that already though.  But this uproar was built off the same thing that breeds any controversy: groups of people seeing things differently.  Normally we have some degree of understanding when we take to controversial grounds because things like politics and religion and our other favorite controversial conversations aren't really that concrete.  We tend to understand that other people have other interests and situations and that explains their differing views.  So there's a bit more tolerance there on the whole (although not always).  There often exists a concession that it's okay to disagree on such topics.

For the dress, though, people started freaking out.  Because this controversy was rooted in something that we all rely on so thoroughly--our own eyesight-- many people became quite passionate about something really quite trivial.  As far as controversies on the internet go, this dress is probably of the least consequence.  But because we assume that our visual sight is a pretty sure foundation, we feel pretty justified in arguing the point past its pertinence.  We've been seeing the same colors as other people for so long that when things suddenly change, we freak out.  People were getting in arguments with friends and family and strangers alike, some wondering what was wrong with everyone else and some wondering what was wrong with themselves, fearing an onset of colorblindness or worse, without stopping to consider that the other points of view might indeed be valid.

It's amazing how riled up we can become over little things when we think that we are invariably right.

It took a long time for people to understand that both could be right.  It would appear that when arguing over the color of a dress, it would be a concrete enough discussion to settle unanimously one just one solution, but oftentimes multiple correct answers are available to questions, and we don't always recognize that.  As fallible humans, we often get into thinking ruts that dictate our perceptions of things--there is only one solution; I can trust my eyes and no one else's; people who disagree with me must be delusional or lying.  But usually the truth requires opening our minds to realize that the opposite is the case.  There are many solutions.  Many opinions and views can be trusted.  People's differing opinions are sincere and they don't want to be difficult.

Finally, I hope we're able to look at what's gone on here and better appreciate the importance of context.  The ambiguity of the color of the dress comes from its lack of background information in the picture, which can help our eyes decide what kind of filter to process it under.  Is it in the shadows? Is it in broad daylight? Things would be much clearer if we had more information there.  Likewise, the dress can look different based on the context of the viewer's surroundings.  Many people reported seeing the dress in one color set at first, and then in a very different way not long afterwards.  Their viewing environment put context to the ambiguity of the dress color and changed how they saw things.

For our daily lives, we should make our best effort to make sure that we can gather as much information as possible to give context to our problems and the situations that life presents us.  Of course, this context isn't always available, and that's why our personal context plays such a role, too.  The mindset that you're in when you approach a person or see a problem will often dictate your perception of it, and therefore your reaction.  If we can do more to make sure that our interactions come from a place of understanding and love, we will be able to avoid much of the heartache or anguish that controversy and differences can cause.

So, for all of you who have lost hope in humanity for everyone's great obsession and distraction over such an insignificant trifle, nothing is lost if we can learn something about ourselves in the process.

esse

Scenario: you're in this awkward social experiment called "life", and you need to organize things before you go crazy.  How do you attempt to deal with everything going on, everything that you have to do, everything that you want to do, and the rest of the chaos around you?

A common practice that test subjects have (oh goodness, I'm beginning to sound like GLaDOS) is to organize things into to-do lists. I sometimes do this when I have a lot to do in a day.  Here is an example:

Thursday:

• Statics homework
• Calculus homework
• finish reading The Chosen
• catch up on writing
• clean out some fridge food
• watch a  talk

This is all good stuff, but...what is it leading to?  As soon as I finish my homework, new assignments replace those.  As soon as I catch up writing, there's more to be written.  The instant I finish washing all the dishes, the sink is filled anew.

What's the point of doing things?

Well ultimately, I believe that doing things will lead to being things.  If I continually do math homework, I will eventually become adept at mathematics.  If I persist at washing dishes, I will eventually...be...the only one in the house that washes dishes?

Anyway, I have constructed a to-be list, for several reasons.  Aside from giving long-term goals and an end in mind, I think this is sometimes more constructive than a to-do list.  Instead of just getting my statics homework done to get a grade, I can also focus on getting it done to become an engineer.

It can also combine several trivial tasks into something more meaningful.  It adds depth to what I'm trying to accomplish here.  And simplicity.  Instead of having a list of things to do like "make eye contact" "say thank-you" "open the door for people" "say 'excuse me'", et cetera, you can condense it into one task: be polite.  Then you only have one thing to remember and one question to ask, rather than a whole slew of things to remember to do.

So.  Here is a to-be list that I have constructed for the next couple weeks.  That is not to imply that come several weeks I will have become each of these things, but that these are the things that I want to particularly focus on and progress in for the next while.

To Be:

• Kind
• Serving
• Hard-working
• Grateful
• Eager to learn
• Respectful

There.  Six things, just like on the to-do list.  But there's a lot more to be done here.  Don't let that overwhelm you, though.  You don't have to suddenly become everything all at once, just like you don't have to do everything all at once.

It requires a little bit of a different way of thinking and maybe some different effort, but I think it's worthwhile to have a to-be list.  If anything, it might just be refreshing to get away from the to-do lists for a bit. :)

saponem arca archa

In following with my previous post, I've decided to share another mind-blossom with you. That's right, some people have mind palaces, I have mind-blossoms...
Besides, it's nice to give flowers to people.

A couple weeks ago, I was going to classes (imagine that!) and in several of them, the teacher got somewhat distracted at some point in the lesson and diverged to some other topic that wasn't going to be on the next test.

This isn't an unusual occasion, especially for some of my classes, but it was unusual in the quality of the diversions.  Instead of talking about a time that a colleague said something funny, or being coerced into doing a solo polka demonstration (true story.  According to my physics professor, "the polka is the only dance that makes any sense," which is why you might make a polka analogy when explaining circuit analysis...) These diversions were more...well, I don't really have a word for them right now.

In choir, we stopped rehearsal (any performer knows that you do this at great cost) to hear and hopefully understand something about the 60's and 70's. How young people were being forced to fight in a war they didn't start, they didn't believe in, and they couldn't support.  But their country and their parents and anything else they had put their trust in was suddenly betraying them, so they reacted in the only way a rising generation can: cultural revolution.

In graphics, we basically bagged the lesson and the quiz and listened to a lecture about the wonders of technology and engineering.  We looked at picture after picture of cool ideas and models and projects, like this chair:

 

In physics, we stopped drawing diagrams on the board and forgot about all the theories and equations to hear stories about young scientists like Michael Faraday who had little education but eager, brilliant minds and the right opportunities to make discoveries that changed the world.

It seemed like I was experiencing a soap box day, where instructor after instructor decided it was a good day to forget about books and tests and just get on the soap box for a bit (or...the majority of the class) and teach us things about life and the world they've lived in and the experiences they've had.

And I found myself learning like never before. I was engaged and interested.  Sleep didn't even tug at my eyelids.  I didn't consider pulling out a book to read or a note to pass (see how well I normally pay attention?)  I went to school and received so much more than I usually got.

Here's the thing.  I can learn physics on my own.  I can read the book and look up experiments and diagrams.  I can even learn skills on my own.  I can teach myself music or how to use computer software.  It's not always as easy, but I can do it on my own.

What I can't get on my own is this life-wisdom that other people have accumulated. I can't understand what it's like to live in a time when people weren't regarded (for the most part) equally.  I can't imagine living in a time of war and having that affect the lives of my friends and family.  I can't create my own inspiration.  I can't learn the value of respect without having someone show it to me.  I can't learn to love without anyone to give it meaning.

People seem to regard the activity of getting on one's soap box as a bad thing.  I think it's one of the most worthwhile endeavors you can make.

Have more soap box days.

educationem

Baaaaugh. I feel like it's been forever since I posted last (indeed, a whole week).  I've been having a small case of writer's block, really.

But that's ending today. Not because I have a good idea now, but because I'm sick of it. So I'm going to write stuff whether it's good or not.

Ha, whether it's good or not...
See, I used to be an avid writer.  Throughout most of middle school I thought I wanted to grow up and become an author.  So I would write stories all the time.  I had a particular preference for stuff set in medieval times and also science fiction.  Kindof a weird match, but true...I was really quite steampunky, looking back.
I was going through some old writings I found recently and was like "Woh, this was written forever ago!  I think I was a better writer five years ago than I am now..."
Which, when it comes to fictitious writing, may very well be true.

Once upon a time in ninth grade, I got sick of English.  I think part of it was that I got bored with the teacher and a little distracted by myriad other things, but I stopped enjoying writing assignments (and really, stopped doing them altogether) and since then I've been largely focused more on maths and sciences than writing.

It doesn't really help that my high school writing career largely involved analytical and technical writing.  I still enjoyed it and succeeded at it, but it wasn't as inventive and didn't always consist of a whole lot of myself.

So frankly, it's a bit strange to me that now I'm in university, studying mechanical engineering (where all my classes are math and science-based) I've kindof resurrected my former writing self.  Of all times to do so.

Perhaps it just goes to show that now I've finished all my required English and Art classes for the rest of my foreseeable educational journey, I have to get my fix some other (optional) way.

I just think it's interesting that when it comes to science versus art, the only ground seems to be middle ground.  You really can't have one without the other; even in individuals it's somewhat impossible to devote yourself to becoming entirely immersed in one while completely avoiding the other.

"Ohai, I'm Leonardo da Vinci, and I'm the boss of Art and Science."

It almost seems as if the further you delve into one area, the deeper you go in others as well.  Like the more you know about anatomy, the better you are at drawing people.  And the more experience you have with music, the easier it is to understand sound waves and sound interference. 

So I guess as long as you're learning something, you're gradually learning everything. Which is a pleasant thought to me.

ignotum

Once again, this post is a bit of a sequel to the one previous...

Perhaps it's just a clever scheme to make people read more posts, making them sequentially related.
Muahaha.

Anyway.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

It's something that I've been realizing on occasions here in univeristy...you spend so much of your life learning things like how to count in Binary and synonyms for the word "loquacious" and the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, but secretly every class teaches me that there's really quite a lot out there yet to be explored, be it by me or by anyone else.  There's a lot that I don't know, and there's also a lot that nobody knows.

I mean, just think of all the knowledge that is contained in one library.  Especially if you're at a university with a massive library.  There is a lot of information in there.  So much that we can't even store it all--we have to use online archives for much of it.
Now think of all the things that aren't in books or on the internet.  If you're skeptical, go ahead and read a wikipedia article or a book (superfast) and when you're done, tell me whether you had more questions answered, or more questions arise that you never knew you had.

If you're me, you read an article on the pinky finger as a vestigial structure, and now you're wondering just how important pinky fingers actually are...how often are they used now?  What made them so useful long ago before we had keyboards and video games to make our fingers so dexterous?  Could all those menial tasks of the past like plowing and spinning wool and cobbling and coopering and smithing really have required the use of a pinky finger?
When in reality...nobody ever thinks about fingers that much, until they learn about them.

See how abnormal knowledge makes us?

Anyway.
What's the point of it all?  All this endeavor to learn things and become an expert in some field and to research more and more to find out new things, when really all of our experimentation and learning is only to find out new questions.

Truly, the more educated we are, the more we realize just how ignorant we are.