Learnin' Stuff

You might have wondered why am I doing this. It would be easy for me to answer with a non-answer, with “Why not?” or “Because it’ll be great!”

But I don’t want to leave it just at that. There some information that sounds like an answer on the about page, but when I re-read it, it sounds a little...formal? stiff? didactic? 

Well I'm gonna try again and explain some things.

My decision to take a gap year was a two-year process. I can’t tell you exactly when or why it began, but I can tell you that one of the biggest reasons has to do with school.

In the last year I have thought a lot about school, and learning things, and where it is I have learned the most.

To be clear, I don’t deny the importance of what you learn in school and in school curriculums, and I know it’s important to have the ability to write clearly, and to know theorems well enough to utilize them, and to have a understand of the basic structures that make up the world as we know it.

I am, however, certain that no one would disagree with me when I say that that kind of learning is not the most important kind. And yeah, that’s obvious to a lot of people. But I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me a long time to realize that, and to really appreciate what that means—to embrace the places and situations other than school in which I have learned.

In the theatre I have learned about art and emotion, and have learned how to connect with humanity. In the pool I have learned just how far I will go, and can go, to reach a goal. I’ve learned just how much it matters to be supported and how much it matters to recognize when a change needs to happen. On the ski slopes I’ve learned what it is to fly, and what it is to be giddy with anticipation all the while having to refine, refine, refine a movement I thought I mastered long ago. At camp, I’ve learned what it is to be a leader, what it is to be a friend, and what it is to be a person I am proud of.

All of these other classrooms have given me much. There are no tests in these classrooms, no papers, no evaluations. There are only the experiences, and the feeling that you have left these classrooms all the better for having entered them.

I’ll be the first to admit that school classrooms make me a little crazy. They make me forget what really matters when it comes to learning. I focus on the material, the studying, the tests, the grades. I forget that I don’t have to prove myself to anyone, and that the most important thing is not the grade, not the approval of a teacher or the admiration of my peers. The most important thing is my own happiness.

That, in a sense, is why I am doing this gap year thing. I want to step away from the mindset I have about school. I want to find new classrooms. Instead of focusing on the essay due next Tuesday, the vocab test on Friday, the fact that I still don’t understand inverse trig functions, I want to focus on my relationship to the world around.

I want to leave behind the idea of school as I know it. So, I’m going with the mindset that the best homework is the homework you assign yourself. I’m going to seek out new opportunities, to leave my comfort zone, to go into a world where there is no dependable measure of how well I am doing. I’m going with the hope that when I come back I will be all the better for having gone.