Love of Learning
I was a B student in high school. (I have Asian parents so I mean that like a bad thing.) The intention to learn was there but the interest in standardized subject matter wasn’t. I dreaded biology, hated chemistry, and did not understand why in the world I needed to read so much incomprehensible literature in English class. (Why couldn’t they just write books that got to the point? I don’t have time to hypothesize about a dead man’s subtext.)
But I excelled in my favorite classes — Spanish, Art, Media Productions, even Programming 101. Languages were fun for me. I loved learning about new cultures and a whole new way of speaking. And of course I loved the art electives that lended themselves to creativity. These classes gave me the tools to express myself in new ways and use the material to create. They fostered imagination and individuality over cold, hard facts, and inspired me to fully engage in learning.
Our Education System: a diatribe
We know our public education system is deeply flawed in its politics, socioeconomic inequality, lack of funding for teachers, and so much more. But from the perspective of a student, there are also so many broken things that impede real learning.
Formal education turns learning into a chore. Our education system was designed to force you to learn outdated core curriculum and compete with your peers. It rewards those who subdue independent ideas and learn quickly in group settings, and provides a false sense of security to those who get “good” grades. It attempts to measure educational quality against standardized tests that don’t reflect diversity, creativity, or any understanding of the real world. Worst of all, it creates “winners” and “losers,” damaging the “winners” with high expectations and the stress of continuous achievement, and “losers” with low self-esteem and lack of motivation.
In other words, school sucked all the fun and curiosity out of learning. In fact, we didn’t follow our curiosity at all; we followed the antiquated syllabus. Because grades mattered so much in determining your worth as a young person to teachers and parents, we learned to value grades, accept our “given” intelligence levels, and develop a fixed mindset which taught us to play it safe in order to avoid failure at all costs.
Being an artistically-inclined art kid, I felt immensely inferior to my peers who excelled in math and science. I was an visual learner who could not understand something until I saw it, and I believe I had mild ADHD that probably contributed to my inability to focus in group settings (aka all classroom settings.) I’m terrible at rote memorization, but great at solving problems creatively. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was how much your parents could pay for after school tutoring and SAT bootcamps. What mattered was your GPA. What mattered was how much you were willing to sacrifice social life, extracurriculars, and sleep for homework. I used to have a history teacher who would not only assign us unmanageable amounts of homework such that we stayed up late every night, but silently dock us participation points (therefore lowering our grades) for accidentally dozing off in class. How twisted is that? High school sucked.
As a struggling student, I theorized that the entire education system was designed as a way for adults to tell kids they’re not good enough. When you do finally become good enough, you lack the self-confidence to achieve things on your own because your self-worth comes from external forms of validation. And then you’re just a hollow shell of “success.”
Now, as a fully-graduated adult, I’m fixing my relationship with education. I’m thrilled to finally focus on learning outcomes over grades and life-long learning without being debilitated by grades or external expectations. After I got school out of the way, I finally started learning.
At the time of writing, I’m enrolled in two city college classes and auditing three online classes. (Online video lectures are amazing for people like me with short attention spans who need to pause, finish my thought, and resume the lecture when I’m ready.) In my free time I read books, watch Youtube tutorials, investigate new tools, and try to read dozens of Medium and Wikipedia articles to learn more about every subject imaginable.
I love learning. It gives me so much inexplicable joy. When I took an accounting class last quarter, I remember telling everyone how much I loved it. People judged, but I truly enjoyed every bit of balance sheets and bank reconciliation. Understanding how things work fuels my curiosity and I get such a high level of stimulation when I grasp a new concept. New ideas and knowledge fill my life with excitement and passion, and self-learning has brought me so many amazing things in life including photography and my career in design.
Character Strengths
Recently, I took a character strengths test (from VIA institute on Character). This quiz tells you your signature strengths, the qualities that come most naturally to you. Understanding these strengths allows you to champion them and become the best version of yourself. My top strengths are:
1. Love of Learning
Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one's own or formally; related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows.
Of course my number one strength is learning! It all makes sense. All my hobbies are really just me learning different things and playing with whatever I have an interest in at the moment.
2. Curiosity
Taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering.
This trait is the entry point to “Love of Learning.” Being curious and exploring my curiosity allows me to fulfill my quest for new experiences and new information. This is why I love starting projects more than finishing them. This is why I overwhelm myself with the amount of things I want to do. This is why I have a million and one tabs open in my browser.
3. Creativity
Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it.
Duh! Look at my entire website. It’s me creating nonstop in every form. I have a such a strong need to be creative; I feel dead inside otherwise.
I’m honestly so happy to know that learning is what fuels my happiness. I’ve been trying to rewire my cognitive habits to embrace a growth mindset and expand my learning regardless of whether or not I’d fail. I challenge myself with new opportunities that I know I’m not good at, but could become better at. I could be a good runner even though my mile time isn’t great. I could be good at math or science. My B’s in school don’t define me.
Most importantly, I have to remind myself that success isn’t an end result. It’s about the process of becoming a better version of myself.
It’s cheesy but you know it’s true. Now get to learning.
