On Lifelong Learning
Our whole childhood.
One of the biggest goals we strive for is finishing school.
This year you’ll be going to Pre-k.
As you grow older you’ll notice most children are also attending around the age of three.
Sometimes, I wish you would slow down, because in the blink of an eye, you’ll be in 8th grade.
After 8th grade, you will attend High School.
Then finally, graduation.
Some of us then enter the workforce or go to college.
But it’s in this moment at the end of our teenage years,
People decide they have learned enough.
They convince themselves that they’ve been learning for the last 15 plus years.
And now it’s time to relax.
You can’t make this mistake, son.
This is just the beginning.
When we look back at our school experience, specifically college.
There are times where we doubt ourselves.
Was this education worth the expense?
I may have learned in the classroom,
But when it comes to learning skills that I needed for my career,
I learned most skills on the job.
The question enters everyone’s head.
Why did I pay so much money for this degree and how important is this?
I came to the realization that being in school,
Taught me and gave me the resources to understand how to solve problems.
We often treat learning as a game of who can remember the most.
This game doesn’t serve students.
Who’s really benefiting long term?
Yes, we may get a good grade.
But what does an A do for you that a B couldn’t?
There’s a common saying that,
The C students run the world
Because they’re constantly questioning the status quo.
The A students work for the C students.
And the B students work for the A students.
I’ve decided that the grades that we get in school,
won’t make a difference later in life
and how we will attack our lifelong learning.
I think about math.
Your mom is a math teacher and I studied finance in undergrad.
So we have a little bit of math background.
We aren’t mathematicians by any means.
But your mom tells me all the time that her students ask her,
“How relevant is this?”
“What’s this geometry equation and why is this important?”
And it’s funny.
I do agree with them.
To an extent.
Soon, you will learn PEMDAS
Which stands for Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
The order of operations.
In my opinion, the most important concept taught in math classes.
This single acronym taught in elementary school shows why math is so important.
After all, we aren’t going into the workforce to use these exact formulas.
It may be the case if you’re a mathematician
Or if you’re a rocket scientist.
We learn math to solve everyday problems.
The process of critically thinking is what’s most important.
And I feel this is how we need to approach learning opportunities.
We don’t learn for the sake of learning just so we can spew out the results..
The saying is you learn something new every day.
So why do we stop?
I challenge you to keep learning,
learn something different.
Google something random.
Watch a Ted talk,
Watch a YouTube video.
Read a meaningful article.
Listen to a podcast on a topic that you may think you don’t have interest in.
But then after a while.
After just a few minutes on that topic.
You’re gonna learn more than you knew before.
Enjoy your walk.
