Learning French in Spanish was something of a wonderfully confusing idea. Even the way it was phrased seemed a bit odd. Learning French in Spanish. Like, instead of having an English translation for French words, there is a Spanish translation. Thus was the idea my friend presented to me one afternoon. She had been wanting to learn French, and I had been wanting to learn Spanish, so we might as well try it. The theory was that if a person were to learn their third language in their second language, then the person would have a fuller grasp on the meaning of each word. It wasn’t purely memorization and translating, it just became, well, like understanding your own language.
This particular friend has a great talent for writing and with that, she has a great passion for knowledge. The proposal of learning French in Spanish did not surprise me just as her other pursued interests — learning to play the melodica, discovering the history of old paintings, and reading stories about the Romanov family — did not surprise me either.
She introduced me to this quote by the New York Times Bestselling author, John Green, that says, “Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff — like jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘You like stuff,’ which is not a good insult at all. Like ‘You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’”
Learning seems to have lost its appeal in our society. People may go to institutions for higher education, but, often, it only serves as a mean to an end. Go to this school to get that job to make this amount of money to buy that stuff.
Personally, I know I’ve studied hard for a test just to get a good grade. Practically two days later, I may have easily forgotten all that I had “learned.”
Often, we complain about the classes that we know we won’t have use of in the field of work that we plan to go venture into. For me, I do not see myself heading into a career that utilizes advanced math and science. I even had a substitute teacher last year who told the class that we had already far surpassed the math that we would actually need. Algebra I was the extent of the applicable math. Ironically, it was a math teacher who told us that. Because we don’t see ourselves using that information in the future, we don’t think it’s worth our while to sit through such a class.
It’s sad that our view of education has come to this. That if we don’t reap immediate benefits, then there’s no point in learning at all. And to be honest, I easily fall into that line of thinking from time to time. But education isn’t just processing new information as much as it’s acquiring discipline.
My science and math classes have been some of the most rigorous courses I’ve taken at Westminster, but because of those classes, I’ve become an independent learner, a better thinker, and a problem solver.
Yet, with discipline aside, we should pursue knowledge. Dare to be a nerd. John Green has quite a bit to say that subject: “Saying, ‘Hey, I notice that you’d rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you’d rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan.’”
Shouldn’t we desire to have that? To be passionate about something as opposed to being apathetic to everything. People with passion take action. They’re the world changers. They are the ones who have a voice in society.
