By Kerry Tinga
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION is to ignite curiosity and expand our intellectual capacity, not cram our minds with loads of information (which we will instantly forget) at once.
I write this article in a document on my computer that is one of many, many documents I have open, yet this is the only one I get to fill with my own expressions, the rest are bullet points and quotations of facts, figures, and other person’s thoughts and observations. Since I follow the school calendar of English schools, in a few weeks, I will be taking my final year exams. From the moment I wake up to the moment I accidentally fall asleep on my desk with my head on the keyboard of my laptop, I try to use all the time I have to study and, I am not proud to admit, spot topics that I believe will appear on the exam (but don’t we all?).
It can be, and is, draining to read dry articles that I swear the author made no attempt at making easy or enjoyable to read, figuring out what I was trying to say in my handwritten notes, and moving it all to notecards and flashcards for me to repeat in my head and memorize. I, like most people my age, don’t have the greatest attention span, thanks to the Internet, and television, and the technology that we encounter daily that has gotten me used to instant gratification. The longer I sit at a desk trying to work the more agitated I get so I take the occasional study break that extends into my lunch break that extends into a mid-afternoon snack break and I can’t get myself to sit back at that desk and work.
To try and keep my study breaks to a set time and to keep my mind engaged I re-acquainted myself with an old friend: “Jeopardy!” You have probably heard of it and, like me, have probably watched a couple of episodes when you were younger and there was no Netflix or Hulu so you had to just watch whatever was on the television. Or, if not, you have probably seen the hilarious SNL parodies of Celebrity Jeopardy and Black Jeopardy. Either way, you should be familiar with the classic game show with a question-answer, or rather, answer-question format. The various gimmicks aside (such as the Daily Double), it involves three contestants trying to answer as many general knowledge trivia as they can, topics ranging from literature and history to the sciences, pop culture, and the like.
The episodes are all under half an hour, and the actual show goes by pretty quickly as you try to answer the questions as if you were one of the contestants. When Final Jeopardy is up, one (or more in case of a tie) of the contestants is declared the winner, and Alex Trebek says his closing remarks, my mind is engaged and ready to go back to studying. I know I would not be the greatest contestant, answering only a fraction of the questions correctly, but whether I get them right or wrong I am interested in learning more about topics I knew little to nothing about.
“Today’s topics for the Jeopardy round includes… ‘American Vice Presidents,’” Trebek begins, and I sigh knowing that I probably won’t be able to answer any of the questions. And I am right. But as the contestants go through the category I learn a bit more, and get curious, Googling names and facts. I try to store these bits of fun facts and knowledge in my head.
This reminds me of why I am going through all this trouble, not just to study for my exams, but the whole idea of higher education—to constantly learn and expand my knowledge, even if it may not seem like it is immediately useful at the time.
I go through my notecards and say all the facts out loud to try to remember it for the exam. If it is going to be like all the other exams I have had to write in the past, the minute I finish the exam, about 90 percent of the knowledge I tried to retain for it will be gone (to make room, with hope, for all the information I have to try and cram for the next exam). It may seem like it was a waste, to study all of that just for me to forget it soon enough. It is like when my younger brother asks me to help him with his homework, and he is doing the exact lessons I had done when I was his age, but I cannot seem to remember the difference between covalent and ionic bonds…
It was once said that the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one. I know in time I will forget what I am now trying desperately to remember, but beyond just these upcoming exams, I know that this pursuit of knowledge, whether in or outside of my studies, is what will enable me to grow. If I forget 90 percent of it, I would still retain 10 percent (although that is being quite optimistic), and you can say that about each class I take, each book I read, each film I watch, even small observations on the street.
Out of all of my friends in my course, I am the only one who chose all her modules to be 100 percent exam-based for grading. It was not because I feel that I am a great test taker, but rather when I was choosing my modules, even when I was deciding on my course, all that I focused on was what subjects peaked my intellectual curiosity. Sure some (most) I find difficult, and part of me regrets taking them, but learning is never really easy. At the end of it I will know a bit more about something that I am interested in, and that in itself is worth it.
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION is to ignite curiosity and expand our intellectual capacity, not cram our minds with loads of information (which we will instantly forget) at once.
I write this article in a document on my computer that is one of many, many documents I have open, yet this is the only one I get to fill with my own expressions, the rest are bullet points and quotations of facts, figures, and other person’s thoughts and observations. Since I follow the school calendar of English schools, in a few weeks, I will be taking my final year exams. From the moment I wake up to the moment I accidentally fall asleep on my desk with my head on the keyboard of my laptop, I try to use all the time I have to study and, I am not proud to admit, spot topics that I believe will appear on the exam (but don’t we all?).
It can be, and is, draining to read dry articles that I swear the author made no attempt at making easy or enjoyable to read, figuring out what I was trying to say in my handwritten notes, and moving it all to notecards and flashcards for me to repeat in my head and memorize. I, like most people my age, don’t have the greatest attention span, thanks to the Internet, and television, and the technology that we encounter daily that has gotten me used to instant gratification. The longer I sit at a desk trying to work the more agitated I get so I take the occasional study break that extends into my lunch break that extends into a mid-afternoon snack break and I can’t get myself to sit back at that desk and work.
To try and keep my study breaks to a set time and to keep my mind engaged I re-acquainted myself with an old friend: “Jeopardy!” You have probably heard of it and, like me, have probably watched a couple of episodes when you were younger and there was no Netflix or Hulu so you had to just watch whatever was on the television. Or, if not, you have probably seen the hilarious SNL parodies of Celebrity Jeopardy and Black Jeopardy. Either way, you should be familiar with the classic game show with a question-answer, or rather, answer-question format. The various gimmicks aside (such as the Daily Double), it involves three contestants trying to answer as many general knowledge trivia as they can, topics ranging from literature and history to the sciences, pop culture, and the like.
The episodes are all under half an hour, and the actual show goes by pretty quickly as you try to answer the questions as if you were one of the contestants. When Final Jeopardy is up, one (or more in case of a tie) of the contestants is declared the winner, and Alex Trebek says his closing remarks, my mind is engaged and ready to go back to studying. I know I would not be the greatest contestant, answering only a fraction of the questions correctly, but whether I get them right or wrong I am interested in learning more about topics I knew little to nothing about.
“Today’s topics for the Jeopardy round includes… ‘American Vice Presidents,’” Trebek begins, and I sigh knowing that I probably won’t be able to answer any of the questions. And I am right. But as the contestants go through the category I learn a bit more, and get curious, Googling names and facts. I try to store these bits of fun facts and knowledge in my head.
This reminds me of why I am going through all this trouble, not just to study for my exams, but the whole idea of higher education—to constantly learn and expand my knowledge, even if it may not seem like it is immediately useful at the time.
I go through my notecards and say all the facts out loud to try to remember it for the exam. If it is going to be like all the other exams I have had to write in the past, the minute I finish the exam, about 90 percent of the knowledge I tried to retain for it will be gone (to make room, with hope, for all the information I have to try and cram for the next exam). It may seem like it was a waste, to study all of that just for me to forget it soon enough. It is like when my younger brother asks me to help him with his homework, and he is doing the exact lessons I had done when I was his age, but I cannot seem to remember the difference between covalent and ionic bonds…
It was once said that the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one. I know in time I will forget what I am now trying desperately to remember, but beyond just these upcoming exams, I know that this pursuit of knowledge, whether in or outside of my studies, is what will enable me to grow. If I forget 90 percent of it, I would still retain 10 percent (although that is being quite optimistic), and you can say that about each class I take, each book I read, each film I watch, even small observations on the street.
Out of all of my friends in my course, I am the only one who chose all her modules to be 100 percent exam-based for grading. It was not because I feel that I am a great test taker, but rather when I was choosing my modules, even when I was deciding on my course, all that I focused on was what subjects peaked my intellectual curiosity. Sure some (most) I find difficult, and part of me regrets taking them, but learning is never really easy. At the end of it I will know a bit more about something that I am interested in, and that in itself is worth it.