When people consider academia, they often think about the classes they've taken — whatever it is they may be studying. They may remember ninth grade geometry, twelfth grade calculus or the terrible statistics class they took in college.

They may remember the teacher they had or the friend that suffered through the class with them. They may have nightmares about the exams, or remember the funny kid who was always joking around in the back.

What a lot of people don't think about, but what is extremely important in the scheme of things, is that academia, in fact, teaches us how to learn and operate in the future.

I remember being in fourth or fifth grade. The teacher wanted us to figure out what type of a learner we were — audio, visual, kinesthetic. We probably didn't think about it at the time because in the moment it probably came across as just another activity.

But think about it — how do we learn today? Do we need to read something over and over? Do we need to talk to it?

It's about learning how to learn, and what best suits each person.

I remember I had an English teacher in seventh grade who was just as concerned with the style of our essays as she was with the content. This frustrated people, of course, because oftentimes students would lose points for missing a comma or a word that they were supposed to copy directly from a reading assignment.

It took me some time to discover that the teacher didn't have some deep personal connection to the style of our work. She merely cared that we were considering the details, because in the future, those would matter more. College professors are more attuned to style and grammar and it's easy to lose points for those things, on what otherwise might be a prize paper.

That teacher taught me how to pay attention to detail, in addition to teaching me about the literature in her class.

Similarly, my high school math teacher took off points if you didn't do the homework, but he didn't award you at all for doing the homework. Though I despised this method at the time, it came in handy for me with college reading assignments — the ones they can't check to see if you completed but plan to quiz or test you on later.

School isn't just about content, it's just as much about how to carry out a certain activity, how to manage content, and how to study, as it is about studying itself.

We all have those teachers who are sticklers for the rules — who take off points for, quite honestly, the dumbest things. We may never thank them for this, but to a certain extent, they have taught us a very important lesson.

In the work world, for example, in whatever our job may be, we will have to follow specific rules. They will be no room for error and so the mechanisms by which we perform — whether we talk something out, read and absorb it, or find some other way to appreciate the content — are just as important as the task we are actually completing.

Alas, it is important to learn how to learn. It is a skill in itself, and a skill to value no less.