This past week, my college hosted its first in a series of faculty colloquia. Three professors presented research in their various fields. One presented about methods for reducing stress in undergraduate nursing students, one about benzodiazepine withdrawal effects, and one about bats' use of sonar and echolocation.

Basically, nothing in these science fields had anything relevant to my course of study — as an English Writing and Humanistic Studies, I would have been fine if I had never seen these presentations.

However, having the opportunity to sit for thirty minutes and learn about these topics that are vastly different from what I learn on a day-to-day basis was actually incredibly enjoyable. It's crazy how much I like science when I'm not being graded on it.

That got me thinking about education. Some people don't understand how I love school. Sometimes, when I have four papers and two exams in one week, I also don't understand how I love school. But it's in times like these where I realize that the reason I love school is because I love to learn things.

I lost that vision back in high school when what I was learning affected my GPA, which affected which college I got to go to. It wasn't fun to have to learn things, especially science and things that I don't fully understand when I was struggling to do well.

But the truth is, I really do love to learn. I know I will never fully understand the scientific jargon and principles, but that doesn't mean that I do not find science absolutely fascinating. I mean, what's cooler than going to space? You know who goes to space? Scientists!

So even though I am not a science person, I realized that my love of learning extends outside of the world of English and history. I love to know things. I love to know things without having to regurgitate it back and without having to receive an arbitrary letter or number in response to my knowing it.

I'm not saying grades don't have a place in schools. Perhaps they shouldn't weigh so heavily, but I also understand that there's not really an alternative, and we, unfortunately, have to have some form of grading.

I will say that grades really stand in the way of people's love for learning. I'm sure most people were fascinated by what we learned in school when we were little, but it got stomped out of us as it became less about gaining knowledge and more about getting As.

My challenge to you, dear reader, is to go out and learn something that might not be totally relevant to your life, but something that interests you, even if only for a minute or two. Go out and learn something without any expectations or hesitations.

The technology age grants us endless knowledge at our finger tips. More people should utilize that. Knowledge is awesome.