Learning and school, how they connect

Learning is what makes us human. To be able to learn from others, books, tv or anywhere is the most important skill in the world. Learning is discussions with others. Learning is connecting learning's from different sources to one. Learning is about exploring the stuff that interests you to explore even more.

School is often about remembering. Remembering what was talked in the class or lecture, remembering what the books said and remembering what school project was all about. School is about proving that you remember.

Often learning and school are not going hand to hand. There are so many subjects students don't really care about but have to study anyway to get the grades. I'm not actually criticizing that, certain things in life are boring and just have to be done. You need to brush your teeth twice a day and the same way you need to get your grades to get in to the next challenge.

I just want to give an advice to all you students: don't let schools to kill your enthusiasm to learn. Being in a high school, college, university or what ever place, you have once in a life time opportunity to have time to learn. It can be something totally different that your school is about. It can be learning new languages, learning to play guitar, learning to create web pages or learning how people gets motivated. Just use the time you have to learn. You won't have this much time for it before you retire.

I'm speaking from experience. Already in university I lost my passion to learn stuff and after university it took many years to get it back. In university I just did what I had to do to graduate. Then at work, of course I got to know how to do my job, but I'm now talking about learning the extra stuff. Those things that no one is asking you to learn, but you want to learn because of your own interest and because it makes you better person.

Most probably none of students will take this advice seriously. I bet I wouldn't have taken. I used most of the extra time in school times to sports and partying. Everybody just needs to learn from their own mistakes. If I got even one person to think about this, it was worth it.

And if you're not a student anymore, I hope you have your inner desire to learn. You won't have the luxury to use all the time you want for learning. You just have to use your time wiser.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen