I am not interested in education – well, that is, until I joined Minerva. Some kids here come from Studio Y, and were working on projects which explicitly involved education. Most notably, one of them was working on something EdTech-related (educational technology), and another was working on figuring out how to teach the least motivated students. I say "most notably" out of convenience/habit and only don't include the third Studio Y-er because I just don't know what she was working on there.
I am not one of these people. My interest in education is still only equivalent to me reluctantly dipping my toe in. At this point, I am interested in education out of necessity rather than passion. You have to be mildly interested in education if you're helping build a university, right?
Well, that's only partially right.
I am interested in learning. This is as selfish as my interests get. I am interested in learning so much that I can sit in my room doing math or learning a programming language all day, without actually noticing that it's been all day and I've in fact forgotten to eat. (I forget to eat often – not because I'm anorexic or I don't want to eat, but just because, when I am doing a task, I am very easily engrossed and compelled to complete it before getting up, because if I leave, I always have an excuse not to finish the task – but that's another story.)
Since I've been here, I've learned a few things. Unfortunately, one of those is not yet "how to feed myself and not eat cereal for three meals". I've learned some statistics. Some gorgeous, gorgeous statistics. If I ever had interest in giving up time that I could be working to do so, all the theoretical concepts – the ones for which we were told, "It's alright, you don't have to memorize these, only generally understand them," – would be plastered all over my dorm room walls. (Perhaps that is the difference between me and a friend down the hall who insists he wants to learn more math.)
But let me get back to my original statement: I am not interested in education.
Through Minerva, I've had the pleasure of meeting the wonderful Eliana Lorch. She stuck around for a couple of days before dropping out to accept her Thiel Fellowship. But in two days she reminded me that I am not interested in education–– in fact, I don't even like education, or edtech, or anything like that.
I like microbiology and genetics. I like knowing that DNA comes from 2-deoxyribose, and that the 5' end goes to the 3' end, and that telomerase makes me happy, though it sometimes makes people sad...
I like math. I don't exactly know what kind of math, but I'm pretty partial to calculus, and I know that I don't like applied statistics. I am not like Eliana, in that way. She enjoys using words like Kaprekar Routine, while I'd rather say things like, "Leibniz rule" and "Laplace transform"...
I don't like complex systems. I like the idea, but I would rather not spend all my time thinking about it when I could be learning quantum mechanics or anything else.
I don't like having an entire class based around communication. I understand that knowing how to communicate effectively is probably important, but I would rather not spend all my time reading an assigned novel that we barely even wind up using when I could be learning about partial derivatives.
I don't like the philosophy of science. I argued with one of the aforementioned Studio Y-ers about this. He was not satisfied with my answer of, "Yes, I get that it's probably important, but I am not excited to learn it." I was not satisfied with his answer of, "What are you talking about? It's the most exciting part of science because it's the most fundamental!"
I like statistics... but only in theory.
I know fairly specifically what I like. I am annoyed that I no longer have time to pursue it because I am always so swamped with assignments that I don't care enough for. (Side note on not caring enough: if you knew me in high school, you would know that I am an absolute perfectionist, to the point where I'd repeatedly re-write any lab assignments that we got to take home until the handwriting looked sufficiently neat. This resulted in me having a lot of scrap paper on which to do math. I only did this for subjects that I cared about. I now only dot my i's and cross my t's for any statistics papers I am tasked to write. My statistics papers get refined, although not as much as I would typically like. The other papers get thrown in exactly on the deadline, slightly aggravated that they aren't better, but also unwilling to spend extra time on them, even if I had the time.)
I am angry that I no longer pursue things I really adore because having all of my classes and schoolwork on my laptop means that I do not have the heart to keep looking at the screen after I am finished. Also, my headphones recently broke, and I do my most fun tasks in the middle of the night, while my roommate would prefer to sleep.
How is all of this related to anything?
Well, this is the weekend before finals week. We explicitly got the weekend off; we were told that students throughout the country were spending all 48 hours of this weekend cramming facts that they would likely not remember in the coming years, and that that was exactly what the Minerva staff did not want us to be doing. So we had no homework this weekend.
Having no homework this weekend made me run around like a chicken with its head cut off. I lazed around the residence hall and proposed ice skating ventures just because I actually did not have a clue what to do with all this free time.
And not instantly being able to fill free time with voluntary learning––as I typically would have been able to do before university––made me annoyed, and a bit sad.
How does Eliana relate to any of this?
Well, she had messaged the entire class this morning letting us know that she was leaving for the East Coast and then Portugal this Thursday, and that she wanted to see us before then. She linked to the same post that I linked to above when I mentioned her, and its details reminded me that I do not need formal education to learn.
When I was only slightly younger, I wanted to be like Jacob Barnett. I also wanted to go to MIT and double major in Molecular Biology and Computer Science. From then on, I decided that I would learn all the math that my brain could handle. I did math for fun in my spare time (and trust me, it was ridiculously fun). I learned new programming languages in the other part of my spare time. I had a lot of spare time. I can't remember doing homework that much in high school. Funnily enough, my math homework never got done in Forms 4 and 5. Ever. Alright, maybe once, but we were assigned such ridiculous volumes of repetitive things that I'd skim the chapter, ignore the problems, then ace the test. That was how I was. All homework except essays and labs got done the morning before the class, if I felt like doing it at all. My IT homework also never got done. I probably did two of the multitudinous assigned readings for the entire two years. I don't know how I placed first in that CSEC exam, because I ratched all the theory answers based on the standard response of "___ makes ___ more efficient". If any of you are teachers reading this who thought I put a lot of time into completing assignments for their class – I'm sorry, but there were genetics and cryptography courses to be taken. It's not that I didn't care for your efforts, but that the work was painstakingly mundane. I literally only passed any of your classes because I spent time learning how to take tests, and reading things about whatever we were studying on the internet. Also because I actually paid attention in class. Lots of it. I had no use for texting people under the desk, or talking to people during class. And because I asked questions. Sometimes these questions seemed oddly tangential or too high-level, but I promise they always made sense in my head. The never-ending series of "How?"s helped me structure information in my brain, even and especially when it was prefaced with, "Well, you don't need to know this for CSEC, but..." Those were my favorite kinds of answers. I promise. (My biology homework got done though. That genetics assignment got done the night we were given it – AKA about a month in advance of its due date. But my high school biology teacher already knew that.)
Learning all the math that my brain could handle did not have any hidden assumptions for the future. There was no clause of this agreement which said that I'd learn all the math that my brain could handle up until I went to university, at which point my exploratory learning process would freeze until further notice.
The guy down the hall that I mentioned earlier has decided that we are going to learn math together now. Our first topic will be partial differential equations. I am not too sure how much this will work because my most productive learning typically takes place in a pitch black room with no one else around. But at least it's some sort of motivation. If not motivation, then accountability. After never needing external motivation to do anything in my learning life, I am now relying on being accountable to someone else for continuing to indulge in something I truly love. It's almost ironic.
I'm going to start reluctantly wrapping this one up, because I have to leave my bed in about eight minutes.
Tonight, Minerva has invited us to some mystery event titled Reverie. It was done via cards emblazoned with the Minerva symbol stuck onto our door (probably by Lauren, our RA) while we were all planned to be at Minerva HQ for a feedback session. Our only instructions were, "Meet in the lobby at 7pm sharp. Dress warmly."
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, reverie is defined as:
I am not sure whether this experience has been a reverie, but I am excited to see what they have planned for tonight. I am always excited when I have to play Sherlock to know anything about an event, or when I have to be patient for something.rev·er·ie noun \ˈre-və-rē, ˈrev-rē\: a state in which you are thinking about pleasant thingsFull Definition of REVERIE1: daydream2: the condition of being lost in thought
Let me say this, though: excitement does not always mean that the event will be surreal. Minerva tries very hard to incite surrealism in us, but, so far, for me, it has not worked by their design. I feel surreal only of my own accord. That is one thing that belongs to me. But I am still excited, if only to see what happens.
On Friday at the feedback session, we were informed that those of us who have a median score below a 2 (we are graded on a five-point scale, with a 0, meaning no data, also possible) will be assigned extra work over winter break. This work is actually optional. I do not have a median score below two in any of my classes. I have received probably one two for the entire semester. I have also received a crazy array of fours in my stats class. I am not sure how he grades these things, but I'm not complaining, either. Anyway – I don't have to be worried about having extra work.
But this extra, optional help was framed as a "jubilee". This is in fact help because, if anyone doesn't grasp concepts from this semester, they will be in ridiculous amounts of trouble next semester.
Last night, I learned (from Andrew, our fancy-word guru) that the original meaning of jubilee was forgiveness of all debt.
I have not touched on my maybe-plans to apply for a Thiel Fellowship, the bioreactor in a cube I've been helping to build for the past few weeks, or my wandering adventures around SoMa last night (it involved a trip to Ghirardelli for overpriced ice cream, and getting off the bus a stop early and having to either wait 22 minutes for the next bus or walk up the hill that I took the bus to explicitly avoid because I'm terrible at public transit and since when are there two tunnels on Stockton!), but perhaps that's for a part two, since I am supposed to leave my room in negative eleven minutes.
I am teaching myself how to learn and have spare time again. Life is teaching me how to be adventurous again.
And this is my jubilee.
