When I was younger I was obsessed with the word 'why'. Consequently, it wasn’t long before my questioning nature turned its attention towards my studies: why did I have to read that book for English class? Why did I have to memorize the noble gases and their functions? Why did I have to learn to use the quadratic formula?
While some of these questions still baffle me, in the past years I have been able to come up with answers for most of them, answers based off something my parents constantly told me while growing up: Learning is an investment you make in yourself.
This understanding probably stemmed from maturity and my growing dislike for ignorance.
Be that blurting out strong opinions with no evidence, or having to sit through a test without knowing what to write, or even worse, looking blankly at someone after being asked a question. In my drive to exterminate these experiences from my life, I began to truly see the value in learning things, even things that appear useless.
Why should you read that book for your English class rather than looking through Sparknotes the night before? Because if some day you hear someone making a reference to it you will be able to get the joke or add to the discussion with a measured comment of your own, or during the next holiday when you are stuck sitting beside an aunt you see once a year, and you know she loves to read, you can ask her about that book rather than have her drill you about your grades, love life or other unpleasant topics.
Everything you learn should become a weapon in your arsenal, a tool in your toolbox, something to give you an advantage in a certain situation someday.
If you begin seeing every learning opportunity as an investment in yourself, however small this may be, learning will become more enjoyable, or at least less frustrating because now you will be able to see some kind of purpose even to the most random bits of knowledge we are exposed to.
Especially in university, when we are faced with the possibility of taking classes in such diverse areas, each bit of information acquired you can later use to your own advantage, even if it is just to strike up conversation with someone you know is fond of a topic you learned about, or even to add more layers to yourself: after all, who would suspect that an engineer knows so much about art history? Or that a politician can tell you what species of fish can be found in each region of the globe? Or that a lawyer has participated in various dance performances?
