I'm Never Going to Use This

"Why do I need to learn this stuff anyway? I'm never going to use it in real life." is is a pretty common complaint/justification I hear used by students taking a subject they aren't enjoying. I have actually used it myself a number of times in the past, like back when I was taking Algebra I, but the older I get the more I realize that the "I'm never going to use it in real life." complaint is a pretty presumptuous and pointless one to make.

For one thing, to say that you will never use something at any point during your life is to say that you can predict the future. Never say never is a pretty good mantra for a lot of things, but it seems especially relevant when it comes to education. Presumably, you are being educated so that you will be better prepared for a future career and for future life in general. The reason you need that education is because you don't actually know what you need to yet. Once you have been working in a particular career field for a few decades you might be able say with some certainty whether or not a bit of knowledge you covered in college/high school was actually worth learning, but while you are still going through school you are continually being exposed to newer and more complex information and there is no way that you can say with complete honesty and confidence that something is never going to be useful.

It is entirely possible that you must learn a very abstract, seemingly useless concept, before you are capable of understanding, appreciating, or utilizing a more advanced one. Already I see this happening over and over again in everything I've been doing with math and business. At first you have to make a lot of assumptions and work with a lot of abstract ideas that seem to have no real value to them, but that is because once you get deeper into the subject matter, you won't be able to understand what you are dealing with if you hadn't already juggled and mastered the more abstract basics. There really are often real and concrete applications to abstract conceptual theories, that cannot easily be explained when you are first learning those theories.

The fact is, as a student, you just have no way of knowing whether or not what you are learning will be applicable in later life. However, the chances are very high that they wouldn't be teaching you the stuff that they are if there wasn't a good reason for it.

I had a conversation with a professor that I am working with as an in-class tutor this semester about the personalities of some of the students in our class in comparison with our own approaches to education. The class he is teaching, and that I am helping with, is a very low level math course and the students taking it (by and large) really seem to lack any real motivation. It is a class that have to take and so they'll try to pass, but passing with a C is just as good as passing with an A in the class, because they don't really care about the content and they're "never going to use it in anyway."

The thing is, as the prof and I were talking about, is that education, at its heart, isn't/shouldn't be about simply getting a passing grade and moving on. Education is supposed to be about expanding our intellectual horizons and gathering about us new and exciting information. Especially at the Gen Ed. stage of your college career, you might feel like you are taking a lot of irrelevant and useless classes, but the key is to ask yourself not "When am I ever going to use this?" but "How can I use this experience to improve myself?" There is always the opportunity, in any class, to learn something and to find a way to apply that knowledge to your everyday life. You might be able to argue that the knowledge you can gain isn't worth $400 a credit hour, but you can still learn something.

It might be directly related to the class material or it might be related to learning how to function around other people. It might be learning how to jump through hoops in order to pass a philosophy class with a professor that has a very different view of truth than you do. It might mean learning how to organize a group project with lazy and incompetent group members. Even if you come across a concept that seems useless and impossible to understand to you, the process you undergo to teach yourself the concept and work past the mental block you've developed is a real life skill that you will almost definitely have to employ outside the classroom. Even when the material might not be applicable to your career and life, every class, every professor, and every problem you are given during your education is an opportunity to learn and acquire skills that will most certainly prove useful to you.

The moment you are able to approach your classes and educational experience, not as a burden to overcome, but as a opportunity to make yourself a better person and expand both your horizons and you capabilities, is the moment when everything is going to become a lot easier. When the final is coming around, asking yourself "Why do I need to know this?" isn't going to do you any good, but the question "What can I learn from this?" will forever and always serve you well. We, as selfish human beings, always perform better when we can see some good for us in something, but the reality is that there is always something good you can get out of anything if you are just willing to look for it.

Even beyond selfish motivations though, there is another branch of value to be found in carrying yourself through a class that seems useless, frustrating, or pointless. Every bit of knowledge that you acquire for yourself is a bit of knowledge that you can pass onto another person somewhere down the line. What may not necessarily hold a direct pay off for you, could be a life saver (or at least a little useful) for someone else, and there is an honest and true value to that.

For the very reason that we should not completely obliterate the forests of the planet or behave economically recklessly, we should not allow knowledge to be lost to the world. As long as there is even the slightest potential for future generations to benefit from something, we should cling to it and preserve it as much as humanly possible.

As someone who hopes to one day assist in the homeschooling of his children as he was homeschooled, I want to learn as much as I can regardless of whether or not it will aid me personally. Why? Because the benefit of imparting fruitful and helpful information to my future children and grandchildren far outweighs whatever cost I may have paid to acquire that information.

"I'm never going to use this!" is not the comment that a forward thinking individual uses. It is the complaint of somehow obsessed with their present satisfaction and well-being. Someone with their eyes on the distant horizon seeks to learn everything they can regardless of its present worth. I am from a generation obsessed with the present, but our educations are not about the present. Our educations are about the future, a future that is forever uncertain, and the best way to face uncertainty is to be prepared for everything, not just the ideal.

Pax