Why do I study?
Reflections about finding a path in life
Today I’d like to talk about something OT (but not totally): why do I study?
Since I can remember, my days were pretty much all filled up with long study sessions: I have studied during high school (not much, but more than the average student) and during Uni years, especially during the exam sessions where I spent almost 7 hours a day studying.
To this, you should add all the hours that I spend studying for personal knowledge, meaning reading papers, articles, books and watching videos regarding the topics I like, without having any academic or professional reward for it.
The reason I’m talking about this (except for the fact that I’m preparing 3 exams at the moment, so I don’t have much else to talk about) is that I recently listened to this podcast for the 10th time, a podcast that I listened 3 years ago and it totally changed my life.
I’m sorry for non-Italian speaker, I’ll try my best to summarize the content of this short episode to share with you why it struck me so much.
Are you sad? Study!
The episode takes on from an idea: we have been forced to study for our whole life.
This happened during high school but also during Uni years where, although we chose our own study path, we had to confront everyday with deadlines, exams and, in general, receiving an external valuation.
The twist here is to be intentional about studying.
Whether you are a blue or white collar, whether you’re still a student or a recent graduate, whether you’re a freelance or work a 9-5, you can have your own personal path by studying something you like.
The point here is that you’re creating your “degree”, you’re creating the bibliography and you’re taking only the good part about studying, the one without external pressure, exams and deadlines, the one where you study at your own pace and at your own pleasure.
Studying is taking your brain and making it do the thing it does best: giving interpretations to the reality.
Studying has the best ROI
From a more pragmatic perspective, it can be highlighted how much convenient studying is, given that:
It can take how much time you desire (it could be 1h a day)
It is extremely cheap (you can easily access to a lot of free material on the internet and also to books in relatively simple way)
It is a pleasure, because you can invest your time in learning something you like, while maybe other hours of your day could be used in something you don’t like that much
You can create your study program by totally customizing it, deciding whether an argument is worth or not, based on your objectives and intentions.
There are others activities that “activate” us (I’m thinking about sport) but none of them are as full of meaning and as customizable as studying.
Freedom
In our life, is more and more difficult to be free.
By this I mean free to decide how to spend our time, how to organize our own day, given the enormous quantity of obligations we have each day, both imposed (like working) and auto-imposed (like going to that fancy place because all our friends are going there).
Studying can then be the possibility to have a small window on a personal path, unlocking a space of total freedom in our everyday life, having more value than owning a material object or anything similar.
On the other side, not studying is a way to forget about our capacities and abilities as human, as we are made to study, change our opinions about something and put ourselves to test everyday.
Someone who never studies is someone who’s underestimating his own abilities, or someone who forgot them.
Studying as an act of resistance against the dopamine era
What is more against the current, in an era where short contents dominate, to fight against this dopamine tyranny by creating a space of slow learning, a long and structured path of improving everyday by small steps.
We want to stress our brain, to force it to stay on the same topic for hours, to focus: we want it to stay active by challenging him on acquiring new abilities of comprehension and interpretation.
We don’t stop to have purpose, as human beings, as long as we become better person by learning and improving ourselves.
Studying gives us an inclination to planning, long-term thinking, organizing.
It gives us the attitude to commit to something which is difficult and tiring, in order to acquire new skills or new knowledge.
It remind us that, in order to consolidate the things we know, and to discover something new, it takes time and effort. It cannot always be fast and simple as we are slowly starting to think.
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