A Waning Learning Experience

I entered college with the optimism to broaden my horizons in and out of the classroom. Although now, by my fourth semester at the University of Maryland, I feel that my academic and personal experience has begun to stagnate, and even become futile.

Granted I am in an bad mood, academia just is not as inspiring and interesting as it seemed in that first Geology lecture freshman year.

Part of this waning in my spirit to learn has come from my years and years of schooling. At some point, we just flat out get bored: except for those who we eventually call professors. Going through the same system of classes, homework, tests, in more or less the same format becomes awfully mundane and unstimulating.

In addition, the subject materials have seemed to be exhausted from getting the same lectures over the years. On the same token, how are we supposed to major, or take years of related classes without eventually getting bored?

Do not get me wrong, I have been the so-called "over-acheiver" most of my life. Although at some point, doing the same thing over and over again seems to make all the effort futile.

Futile? Yeah. Education these days can be stimulating in a discussion, in a group project, or even in writing an essay. However, so much of our country's academic system makes you memorize or recite information that is spoon-fed to you verbatim. We barely have time to critically think or read and actually advance our intelligence, because we are too busy plowing through all this bullshit.

That is why out of the classroom learning experiences are great. They take you out of the classroom bubble and give you all the stimulation and information to come to conclusions on your own, in stead of having some well-read 60 year old spit information from a textbook your way. Field trips, plays, forums, outside lectures, and youth group meetings/activism are the real ways to learn as far as I am concerned. Besides, these are the types of activities that you engage in in a work environment anyways.

So re-assess your education, and what it means. For me, I am academically lost in trying to choose a major, even though I have comprehensively identified my interests and switched my major twice already. Also, my over-acheiving attribute is waning since I now have the intellect to realize I could be getting more from reading a book or writing an assigned essay. Work is work, but perhaps our educational system should push us to do more creative writing, read books we're actually interested in, and maybe even make our own tests.

At this point in time, I have 4.5 semesters left to go before I enter the proverbial "real world", and I sure as hell am not wasting the time going through the same mundane and unstimulating motions time and time again. Some way, I need to revamp my learning spirit and focus on what will really teach me about life and myself, as opposed to Pearson Education or some burnt out professor.